Loki lost against the Avengers on purpose?

Loki is the god of mischief. He’s a manipulator, a schemer, a plans-within-plans kind of guy, so why is everything he does in “The Avengers” so straightforward and kind of… dumb? He first gets captured when he stands in front of a crowd of people and makes a huge scene. Then with no fight at all, he accepts capture and is brought aboard the helicarrier. The Avengers realize that he wanted to get captured to unleash The Hulk, which he only did to bring The Avengers together.

Loki made it clear in “Thor” that he has no interest in Earth. He wants to rule Asgard, so why bother enslaving and manipulating people on Earth in the first place? He uses the scepter to manipulate Selvig into putting a failsafe in the portal device, so The Avengers can close the portal, get the tesseract and send it back to Asgard with Thor and Loki in tow. With yet another infinity stone in Asgard, plus the gauntlet itself as revealed in “Thor,” Loki is in the perfect position to take Asgard, and Thanos gets the gauntlet (as we see at the end of “Avengers: Age of Ultron”) so he can take Earth.