is there some easy way through referencing that would let me do it without the loop?

No, because the elements you want live in different arrays. It doesn't matter that the arrays they live in are all referenced by elements of yet another array. You still have to iterate over them.

Something like the following would probably be better than a for loop where you push each element on to an array though.

@links = map { $$_[0] } @{$w->{links}}
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-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";