Colonel Miles Quaritch from Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Avatar: Fire & Ash is one of the most physically aggressive and tactically relentless villains in modern sci-fi. As an ESTP8w7, Quaritch thrives on direct action, domination, and high-stakes conflict, preferring to confront his enemies head-on rather than control them from a distance. His willingness to adapt to any environment, exploit psychological weaknesses, and pursue Jake Sully with singular intensity makes him a textbook example of a Se-dominant antagonist driven by power and autonomy.
ESTP 8w7 Characters
Why is Miles Quaritch from Avatar an ESTP? Continue reading for my argument using cognitive functions! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Extraverted Sensing
Quaritch is an effective colonel because he is hands-on and unafraid of taking risks. In the first film, he pilots the AMP suit, fights with Neytiri in close quarters (viciously stabbing her jungle cat and almost killing her), and later Jake Sully. Even after his mask is broken and he’s suffocating, he keeps fighting Jake anyway, by prioritizing immediate victory over his own survival.
In the second film, he commits to learning the Na’vi way through immersion, by living, eating, and sleeping like them, to familiarize himself with their habitat and experiences. He learns by doing and experimenting while being in the process of taking action; he captures his own flying beast (choosing to subdue it instead of tranquilize it) by tackling it, enduring a death-defying plunge off a cliff, and connecting to it, as the Na’vi have done before him. He chooses to physically overpower and subdue it, escalating the personal risk and danger out of a desire to prove himself and impress his son (Se/Fe). He adapts quickly across environments (jungle, sky, ocean), showing his situational awareness.
In the third film, he switches allegiances rapidly. Seeing that Varang has his son, he negotiates with Jake to free “the kids,” then sees her potential for bargaining with and recruits her for the “sky people” by offering her guns and ammunition. (This is a risky strategy from a long-term point of view, since she could turn against them once they give her firepower.) Rather than being off-put by her dangerous physical behavior (cutting his chest, torturing him, and suggesting she might keep him as a sexual plaything), he is turned on by it, and sees it as a way to craft a solid alliance.
He “dies” several times by refusing to quit, and falling prey to his environment, but always on his own terms; Jake and Neytiri kill him, then he drowns after refusing to back down from a battle in a sinking ship, and then he chooses to throw himself off a cliff rather than be taken captive by the Na’vi.
Introverted Thinking
He is more strategic than he looks on the surface, always evaluating who has the most potential to “make a deal with” and striking them as he goes. This is most evident with Varang, but also shows in his willingness to negotiate with Jake, his use of brutal dominance with the Na’vi who are protecting him, and his decision to lay waste to their enemies until they give up the Sully family. He leverages the kids’ capture against their parents’ freedom and offers up their lives if Jake will surrender.
Instead of blindly attacking, he uses psychological warfare to neutralize the Na’vi and make them submit. He destroys their sacred sites to provoke a response and humiliate them; aggression against the tulkun to draw out Jake and his friends. This is an awareness of how actions produce results. In the second film, he moves from military assault to tracking, baiting, and bartering. He analyzes how to fit into Na’vi culture and adapts to it by learning to ride, hunt, and bond.
Varang in his eyes is a valuable alley because she has no respect for Ewya, she is ruthless and willing to learn, and he sees that she is rational enough to negotiate with and form a vicious alliance. She enjoys violence and destruction, which could be useful to him, so rather than be repulsed by her advances and behavior, Quaritch tells her how she could use them to her benefit with helping the sky people. He does not take it personally that she threatened his kid, but as proof of her as a formidable woman whom he could arm to help him take out the Na’vi.
Extraverted Feeling
Targeting the holy places of the Na’vi is to break their spirit. He weaponizes their fear by burning villages to send a message, by public executions of their pets to destabilize them and turn them against Jake, and to undermine their cultural beliefs. Rather than random acts of terror, he targets specific groups that he knows are vulnerable, and expects his actions to produce certain emotional responses (“Jake is not one of us, why are we protecting and hiding him from the sky people? I want this terror to stop! Let’s turn him over to them!”). With Varang, he also tells her what she wants to hear, because he emotionally understands her as a fellow ESTP 8 (“You want an equal”).
Only after he discovers his son, Spider, does Quaritch show Fe development. He tries to build a rapport with the boy (show me how to do things, let me tell you little stories about your mother, I did care about her, you know…) and shows flashes of concern, protectiveness, pride and curiosity toward him. Even though at first he wants to stay detached, and denies that he cares about him to Neytiri when she threatens his life, when Spider almost dies several times, Quaritch becomes distraught and has to save his life. He and Jake wind up preventing Spider’s death at the end of Fire & Ash, after trying to kill each other; while sitting there, panting, he says, “Well, this is awkward.”
Introverted Intuition
Quaritch doesn’t think in long-term abstractions, but he locks into a single point of view and pursues it relentlessly. His mission simplifies into one idea that carries across all three films; Sully is a traitor to his race, and he must be found and eliminated. He ignores the broader consequences (environmental destruction, a cultural backlash, and strategy) in pursuit of that single objective. Even when his tactics shift, his desire to find and destroy Sully never changes.
He also underestimates or devalues the things that Na’vi believe in, such as their connection to Ewya and to everything that exists, and how Spider has become part of their world, because none of that seems relevant.
The Enneagram 8
Quaritch operates from the core belief that in a hostile world, the only answer is to dominate it rather than surrender. He is a tough-talking, no-nonsense bad-ass who expects his orders to be obeyed without question and who sees no problem with employing “force” to make people give in to his demands. In the first film, he uses brute force to run the Na’vi off their land by destroying their holy tree; in the second, he terrorizes the ocean tribes in search of Sully to “even the score”; he weaponizes Varang’s clan in the third, and uses her to terrorize the Na’vi. He has a marine creature gunned down to show them what his weapons will do and then threatens to kill them all unless they turn over Jake and his family.
Villain 8s let nothing stand in their way between themselves and their goal and see leverage as a weapon to utilize against their enemies. Because his entire focus is strength, he tests others constantly by challenging them, threatening what they hold dear, and demanding they come out and fight him in person. He has a begrudging respect for Neytiri for killing him, but intends to even the score.
Even though he claims his desire to pay back Jake isn’t personal, it is. He denies that vulnerable side of himself, just as he denies it to Neytiri’s face when she threatens to cut his son’s throat. He shrugs and says, “Go ahead, he means nothing to me.” But he does, and it wounds Quaritch when his son refuses to go with him at the end of the film. Spider successfully goads him into certain actions by inferring that he is weak compared to Jake; to prove him wrong, Quaritch decides to manhandle and subdue his own flying creature, just to prove he can.
The 7 Wing
Quaritch has a sense of humor that surfaces under pressure, a wry grasp of what is obvious, and a strategic mind. He smirks, taunts, and leans into conflict with enthusiasm, enjoying it. Varang instantly appeals to him because of their shared appetite for pleasure and assertiveness. He is drawn to new experiences, and embraces becoming a Na’vi with experimentation. He treats it like a challenge to conquer, sometimes with little regard for his personal safety.
Instead of stabilizing situations, he escalates them with banter, aggression, or enjoyment. His actions carry a certain amount of theatricality as well (go big or go home!). He is constantly restless, active, and seeking the next challenge or personal high. When Varang gives him drugs and sends him on a trip, Quaritch enjoys himself and finds it amusing.
Read more character profiles from Avatar.
