MBTI Type: ENFJ

Leland is a master manipulator who knows how to target people’s emotional states to get a rise out of them. He uses his silver tongue to overturn Kristen’s rulings in court and cast aspirations on her professionalism, allowing the release of a psychopath in whom he has planted ideas about revenge. He sees a young boy rejected by a barista server and grooms him to become a shooter, then is enraged when the “incel” accidentally kills himself while messing around with his own gun. He meets Kristen’s mother on purpose and seduces her, then uses her as leverage against Kristen, appealing to her kids and winning them over with charm and gifts. He “talks too much,” and when crushed by Kristen’s brutal assessment of him, goes running to his own therapist (the devil) for affirmation and to complain about how small she made him feel. He thinks himself more intelligent than he is. He has a narrow scope of what he wants, very firm and direct futuristic ideas in which he tries to groom other people “toward.” Leland knows when he sees the “incel” that he wants him to become a shooter, and carefully takes him up a dark road in which he plants one idea at a time. When circumstances mean it doesn’t turn out as he planned (the boy kills himself by accident before he can shoot up David’s church group), Leland has an absolute tantrum—because what he foresaw cannot now come to pass, and he must start over again with someone else. He’s manipulative on a psychological level, because he knows what will bother the people around him the most, and what will appeal to them (such as the different techniques he uses to “attract” people). But he is not very proactive in his environment, unless it involves people.

Enneagram: 3w2 so/sp

Leland has crafted a new and more impressive identity as a master manipulator to cover up his insecurities about being a nobody in a school band when he was young, a jerk whose marriages failed. He is arrogant, competitive, and condescending in his superiority, but also wants to leave an impression. Kristen “emasculates” him by revealing his previous identity, of which he is ashamed. He manages to twist things around to his favor much of the time, by reframing them and making himself out to be the victim. He also adjusts his behavior based on who he is around, to appeal more to them – being a “manly man” around the incel to inspire him, being risk-taking and somewhat insulting with Kristen’s mother, knowing she likes “bad boys,” etc. He pretends he is “helping” but really, he is just manipulating behind the scenes.