My EQ8 at the end of April was 785, and reason three was "You recently missed a payment or had a derogatory indicator reported on your credit report." On May 1, my score went up to 791 and that reason vanished from the top four.
I have one baddie on my file: a 30D from November 2017. It reached 42 months (3.5 years) of age at the start of this month. Nothing else changed on my report from April 30 to May 1, besides aging, and I can't see anything else that hit a potential threshold.
This seems like pretty clear evidence there is a threshold for considering a baddie recent at 3.5 years on EQ8. I don't know if this reason is now lurking outside the top four, or if it's completely gone. I suspect it's gone, but that's going to be difficult to prove.
Interestingly, May 1 brought me no score change on the other 8's. EX has for a long time shown this reason statement in third position, so apparently they consider it "recent" for more than 3.5 years. My TU8 only shows two reasons and this isn't one of them, so perhaps that algorithm stops considering baddies "recent" at a younger age.
