That depends, actually.

View holders which are offscreen, and are almost ready to become visible, are fully inflated and with data. This is because of performance improvements.

While the holders which are far off, they don't have any data.

Make any small application with just RecyclerView and keep logging in different RecyclerView methods. You will see how the data is being added, and when is a view holder created during the lifetime of RecyclerView.