I'd not say Freedom is smug because he's a lunatic. Karma...Yeah. Image, though? Not smug. Smart and intelligent, and you haven't met Image. His only weakness is that he likes to talk about relevant things too much, and it's a weakness he was attempting to cut off last I checked it.

In any case, the most recent gain they got was the rest of those Rings that Silveos had the list for, bar the ones we already took out of the case and three that flew out when stolen. But they're not strong enough to justify the smugness, if that's even what's going on and they're not intentionally goading us on into something stupid because we think they're being cocky. They've done that once before.