Script does not fail in certain cases when using set -e in bash. How to write modular code in bash with this behavior?

Question

In bash I know that when you use set -e the script is supposed to "exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status." I want to write a script in bash, but I want to modularize my code. So, I am writing everything in functions. I have encountered the following behavior which I find strange

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -eo pipefail

someFunction() {
    local returnVal

    echo "failed"
    returnVal="$(return 1)"
    echo "I got here"

    echo "$returnVal"
}

someFunction
echo "I got here"

When I run this script as expected I get:

failed

as my output and it exits out.

However, when I change the function to:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -eo pipefail

someFunction() {
    local returnVal

    echo "failed"
    returnVal="$(return 1)"
    echo "I got here"

    echo "$returnVal"
}

someVal=$(someFunction)
echo "I got here"
echo $someVal

I get the following output

I got here
failed I got here

Not only does it not exit, but it runs everything in the function even after one of the commands fail as I have simulated in this concocted example.

I want to be able to get the return values from the functions, and I want the script to exit out immediately upon any error. It seems like since $() is running the function in a sub-shell for some reason it is not exiting! Any help would be appreciated it.

I have some functions that have multiple commands that could fail, but I do not want to manually check if the each command failed and return 1 from the function. Is there a way to have bash exit out if an error is encountered? I know if you do the following it exits out

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -eo pipefail

someFunction() {
    local returnVal

    echo "failed"
    returnVal="$(return 1)"
    if [[ $? -ne 0 ]];
    then
      return 1
    fi
    echo "I got here"

    echo "$returnVal"
}

someVal=$(someFunction)
echo "I got here"
echo $someVal

In this case it would exit out immediately before printing "I got here". I understand that essentially when you write a function in bash you define a new command and when you have echo at the end it will return 0 and assume the function didn't fail. My functions could have multiple commands, and I do not want to check the return value of each one and then return 1 from my function in order to have it exit!