Hi,
load_state_dict() load the weights in a non-differentiable manner. So you end up with leafs as expected.
Here is a version that works as expected:

def del_attr(obj, names):
    if len(names) == 1:
        delattr(obj, names[0])
    else:
        del_attr(getattr(obj, names[0]), names[1:])
def set_attr(obj, names, val):
    if len(names) == 1:
        setattr(obj, names[0], val)
    else:
        set_attr(getattr(obj, names[0]), names[1:], val)

nb_updates = 2
for i in range(nb_updates):
    print(f'i = {i}')
    new_params = copy.deepcopy( loss_net.state_dict() )
    ## w^<t> := f(w^<t-1>,delta^<t-1>)
    for (name, w) in list(loss_net.named_parameters()):
        hidden = updater_net(hidden).view(1)
        #delta = ((hidden**2)*w/2)
        delta = w + hidden
        wt = w + delta
        del_attr(loss_net, name.split("."))
        set_attr(loss_net, name.split("."), wt)
    ##
#
print()
print(f'updater_net.fc0.weight.is_leaf = {updater_net.fc0.weight.is_leaf}')
print(f'loss_net.fc0.weight.is_leaf = {loss_net.fc0.weight.is_leaf}')
outputs = loss_net(x)
loss_val = 0.5*(target - outputs)**2
loss_val.backward()
print()
print(f'-- params that dont matter if they have gradients --')
print(f'loss_net.grad = {loss_net.fc0.weight.grad}')
print('-- params we want to have gradients --')
print(f'hidden.grad = {hidden.grad}') # None because this is not a leaf, it is overriden in the for loop above.
print(f'updater_net.fc0.weight.grad = {updater_net.fc0.weight.grad}')
print(f'updater_net.fc0.bias.grad = {updater_net.fc0.bias.grad}')