Issue #14582: Import returns the module returned by a loader instead of sys.modules when possible. This is being done for two reasons. One is to gain a little bit of performance by skipping an unnecessary dict lookup in sys.modules. But the other (and main) reason is to be a little bit more clear in how things should work from the perspective of import's interactions with loaders. Otherwise loaders can easily forget to return the module even though PEP 302 explicitly states they are expected to return the module they loaded.