Back to Ermit, I always thought he was meh at best with the paranoid bitter attitude. And that is true still, but with the extra lines you find out he's a lot more about being over-the-top about it. He'll actually try think of conspiracy theories on how clouds are involved, and comment on the previous or next level; like implying things were hardcore while the Kaos clan was around and what jobs he's going to take once things are solved, or how he wants you to salvage Drill-X's drill for him.
And in the final level and at the end, he actually warms up to the Skylander and kinda hints that he wants to help back at last. Doesn't explain how Machine Ghost gets fixed under everyone's noses still, but it's not out of nowhere if you talk to him a lot. After that, he decides he wants to take the robot to declare war on clouds, and since they're never seen again, one can probably assume that's exactly what he's doing. It's so strange that we had other bitter archetype characters in the series,but the first is the one that's pretty diverse for a Skylanders NPC.
What I'm saying is in Skylanders 6 we better be able to punch clouds in the face