>>36833489It is nice that Hitch is one of the new Mane5 to show that even boys can be friends to girls (him being the subject of shipping is just bound to happen anyway) but nice that boy-ponies can be included as core cast members.
I like to imagine Sprout somewhat like Diamond Tiara. He is cowardly, lazy, entitled, arrogant and opportunistic, but his motivations for these traits is because he has mother issues. And given his mother inadvertedly conditioned him to believe and fear unicorns and pegasi he's struggling to find his place in new Maretime Bay.
And while he is regarded somewhat the butt of Maretime Bay society afer the events of the first movie, let's not forget he rallied a mob and because an authoritative figure of Maretime Bay all to prove to his mother he can do it. (And when he asked his mother at the end of the movie whenever he was a "bad sheriff" his mother just went back to ignoring him.)
So we shouldn't forget Sprout does have leadership skills, they're just misdirected and underneith his own insecurities and shortcomings.
I don't know if they made Sprout Cloverleaf this dynamic of a character on purpose or they just simply gave a pony mummy-issues in order to be a bad guy for the movie. Eitherway I just don't think he is properly resolved yet.