its-a-gemfact:

One thing I loved about The Future was that the central conflict was very quaint. Steven can’t figure out why the gems aren’t upset he’s leaving. It’s like a season one ep, small scale n’ cute. However, I think they might have done this on purpose to highlight how much steven has grown throughout the series.

Rebecca has said that steven’s biggest vice is that he’s self-sacrificial. He’s deathly afraid of being a bad person, so he’ll often do whatever the noble/virtuous thing to do is, rather than what is true to himself - and that hurts him. She points out that The Test was one of the first times we see this in action. He lies, puts aside how he feels, just to make the gems feel better. At first it seems like maturity, but we learn over the course of the series that this attitude was actually very damaging to his self-worth. This culminates in episodes like Everything’s fine. Pushing aside his feelings about white diamond ‘for the greater good’ caused him to lash out uncontrollably. And he’s so afraid of being a bad person that he lies to everyone about it.

In The Future, we see him start to do this again. He’s hurt that the gems aren’t sad that he’s leaving, but he doesn’t tell them. The noble thing to do would be to not be petty, it was his decision to leave after all. But the moment he turns that car around is the peak of steven’s character development. He finally decides that his feelings are valid, and expressing them doesn’t make him a bad person. He drives straight back to tell the gems how he truly feels. I was in tears y’all.