so tony, steve and scott go back to the first avengers movie to retrieve the tesseract. What happens is that when Tony got a hold of the cube, Hulk suddenly appears out of nowhere, making Tony fall and the Tesseract fell from the case. It landed on Loki’s feet, he takes it and escapes. Tony and Steve decides to go to the year 1970 and take the cube from Howard Stark. They were successful. They return the tesseract in the end. My theory is, the past has already been rewritten. Meaning things happened differently in that time. So, Loki escapes that timeline with the cube. Considering nothing changes since they returned it back. I’m not sure whether 2012 Loki is aware of what’s going to happen in the future. I think IW Loki is dead, and 2012 Loki is alive which makes up the plot of the tv series since the plot says that he will go to historical events, he has the space stone with him so he can go about anywhere he wants. Again, this is just a theory. But I strongly believe that 2012 Loki is out there.