Nginx, Varnish, HHVM – Configuration Guide

I have nginx on the front end interpreting ssl and redirecting all non https traffic to https:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;
}

from there the next server block interprets ssl and passes to varnish:

server {
    listen 443 ssl spdy;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    ...<ssl stuff>...

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6081;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port 443;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }
}

i have taken everything out of varnish to help debug my issue so as of now it just passes back to nginx on port 8080

backend default {
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "8080";
}

back in nginx port 8080 server block:

server {
   listen       8080;
   server_name  example.com www.example.com;
   ...<access logs root index stuff>...

   location ~ \.php$ {
       try_files $uri =404;
       include fastcgi_params;
       fastcgi_pass php;
   }
}

the php variable points to an upstream to hhvm on 127.0.0.1:hhvmport with a fallback to 127.0.0.1:php-fpmport.

When i try to reach the wordpress admin i get a redirect loop. i'm not sure if this is a wordpress issue or server setup issue because when i remove hhvm from the upstream and go directly to php-fmp i have no issues whatsoever. also curl -I https://www.example.com/wp-admin/ shows a 302 redirect to https://www.example.com/wp-admin/ instead of 301. Also if i take varnish out of the picture completely hhvm allow access to wp-admin just fine. Are the headers added (X-Forwarded etc..) confusing hhvm and expecting traffic to be coming from 443?

/var/log/hhvm/error.log isn't showing me anything except jit being created
Turned on redirect log in nginx and its not helping me either. Wasn't expecting it to but it was worth a shot.

Really confused as to whats going on here. I wasn't sure if this belonged in the wordpress section since removing varnish fixes the issue or bypassing hhvm in the admin section of wordpress also fixes the issue it seems more like a setup issue. Any help would be much appreciated. Running on Ubuntu 14.04 if that is of any significance.