Not clear purpose of early return in "finalize a same-document navigation"

[kalenikaliaksandr]

What is the issue with the HTML Standard?

Step 2 of "finalize a same-document navigation":

If targetNavigable's active session history entry is not targetEntry, then return.

Following sequence of steps results in missing session history entry because first history.pushState() is canceled by the second one:

1. history.pushState() puts "finalize a same-document navigation" onto session history traversal queue.
2. history.pushState() puts "finalize a same-document navigation" onto session history traversal queue.
3. first "finalize a same-document navigation" early returns because active SHE != targetEntry, because active SHE was changed twice.

@domenic @domfarolino any chance you know why early return on step 2 exists? I think the issue could be fixed by removing this step, but maybe I am not aware of why it was added.

[domfarolino]

Just a note for posterity, this seems quite related to #10232, which exercises the same early-return condition.