A potential way to get the JSON object's data directly?

The JSON object provides a method to get a copy of the data, through .getJsonDataCopy(). I noticed, however, that this gets really slow when working with a huge amount of data. Is there a way I can get a reference to the actual data that the JSON is using?

I think you'll have to make a suggestion / feature request for this. However, it might be because they want to keep the underlying data structure private to keep the SDK clean.

Depending on your usage, you could just create your own JSON object or class and use it in scripting and expose it to events via C3 functions that use scripting.