Varang from Avatar: Fire and Ash is one of the most physically dominant and psychologically intense villains in the Avatar franchise. As an ESTP 8w7, she thrives on power, control, and direct engagement with the world around her. Her brutal combat style, fascination with domination, and willingness to exploit both Na’vi traditions and human technology make her a perfect example of an action-driven Se-dominant antagonist. But beneath her aggression lies a calculated survivalist mindset that reveals just how strategic and dangerous Varang really is.
ESTP 8w7 Characters
Why is Varang from Avatar: Fire & Ash 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
The first time we meet Varang, she is firing arrows off the back of a flying creature, aggressively dealing with her enemies, and tracking them through the woods. She almost captures Sully’s children many times, and triumphs when she gets her hands on Quaritch. But she doesn’t just fight well; she improvises mid-combat. While airborne, she adjusts her position instantly, reacts to moving targets, changes direction, and keeps pressure on multiple enemies at once. She tracks her prey through the jungle by reading the physical signs they leave behind—tracks on the wet earth, scattered flowers, faint sounds, broken leaves and stems.
Her total ease with the sensory environment makes her a formidable rival to Neytiri, and several times, the two of them clash in armed combat in midair. She is also the first of her kind to use her ability to connect to others to torture them into submission, rather than to join their spirits with her own. Varang takes something traditionally spiritual and turns it into a physical, tactical tool for battle.
When Quaritch goes to her tent, she first tells him she may keep him “to pleasure me” sexually, but then listens to his offer. She drugs him, cuts him and tastes his blood, and wants to connect with him in a physical, visceral way. It takes her no time at all to learn how to handle the sky people’s weapons, from flame-throwers to guns, and to use them in her method of war, showing her ease at changing with the environment and using whatever is at hand. She just tests, adapts, and deploys whatever she learns immediately.
Even her decision not to follow Ewya, their goddess, comes from physical, tangible things that happened in their environment (we prayed to her for help, and fire and ash rained down from the sky to kill us all).
Introverted Thinking
Rather than make emotionally charged decisions like Neytiri, Varang can be reasoned with and convinced to act as an ally to Quaritch, who uses logical reasoning to get her on his side. He tells her that in exchange for helping him get his hands on the Sully children, he will give her weapons and teach her to use them. They can have more weapons if they help the sky people. Rather than give an emotional response, Varang evaluates his offer like a transaction (what will she gain and lose from working with him?). After he teaches her how to fire the weapons, she turns the gun on him and asks why she still needs him, inviting him to prove why she should let him live. He is now redundant, so she does not see his value anymore.
She knows that with these weapons, she can win all of her battles, defeat her enemies, and have fewer casualties. He convinces her not to kill him or use him as a sex slave because he recognizes she is looking for “an equal.” Varang also sees when she is losing the fight and leaves, because she has no personal or emotional stakes in the battle, and it would be stupid to die without personal gain. Even her cruelty is for a reason; she wants to assert strategic dominance and extract useful information about her enemies.
Extroverted Feeling
Varang speaks for the collective and not just herself; it’s not that she does not believe in Ewya, but she leads a band of warriors who rejected the goddess and no longer have to live under her rules. She speaks as the group, reinforces their shared rejection of Ewa, and leads through tribal philosipies.
She understands others’ emotional reactions, but uses that understanding as a weapon rather than a connection. Sully cares about his kids? Well, then, that’s all the greater reason to go after them.
Her use of torture via the neural connection forces a shared emotional experience in which she gets to control the narrative and the outcome; instead of bonding, she uses it to violate them. It’s typical of low Fe villains to enjoy generating pain and to have no respect for personal autonomy, because feeling others’ anguish gives them a “high.” She uses it many times, first connecting to Quaritch to prove her power to him, and then using it to gain information from others and feeling gleeful about her control over them.
Introverted Intuition
She has rejected all spirituality or deeper meaning from her life, in favor of being alive in the here and now. Ewya to her represents something mythical and unreal; and if she is real, Varang wants nothing to do with her. She places no trust in what is unseen, because what happens (rather than what it means) shapes her worldview. To her, they trusted in Ewya, she responded with fire and violence, and so Ewya is useless. She scoffs at the idea of being connected to the goddess or beholden to her in any way, when she could be taking whatever she wants from anyone too weak to stop her. In her own way, she has devalued the need for an internal experience.
She joins up with the sky people, but her partnership is a short-term vision for long-term domination, not a “forever” alliance. She will likely betray them later, take their weapons, and pursue her own agenda again.
The Enneagram 8
Varang knows the world is hostile, so she becomes the most dangerous person in it. She uses force and brutality as tools to ensure no one can hurt her or take anything that is hers. When she tests Quartich, it’s on multiple levels—with a sexual threat, physical harm, and psychological pressure. She is testing him to see if he can be broken and defeated, or if he is like her, someone who cannot be controlled and who is not intimidated by aggression. When he proves to be her equal, she shifts from domination to mutual respect. 8 to 8, they understand one another and meet as two strong, ruthless forces who will go through anyone else to get their needs met. She likes that about him.
When Neytiri captures her, it’s only when Neytiri threatens to sever her braid (something Varang takes from her fallen enemies, to prove her dominance) that she submits, but she does so with resentment and watches for her chance to gain the upper hand. Varang is so angry about this, she later targets Neytiri to even the score, but their battle ends prematurely when she withdraws to save her life.
The 7 Wing
Varang has boundless energy and an unending appetite for combat, domination, and new experiences. She is excited to encounter something new—weapons that kill from a distance, and instantly sees their potential to help her be victorious. Having weapons makes battle even more invigorating, since she knows she can win with them.
Her dalliance with Quaritch is partly because it’s fun / pleasurable to be with someone who is her equal and who doesn’t take any crap from her. He can reason with her into agreement, but it’s also fun for her to toy with him, tease him, challenge him, and probably, have sex with him. She loves being an agent of chaos and disruption; she enjoys fighting, feasting, dominating, and taking whatever she wants. She likes to control other people.
And she is forever moving toward her environment and expanding her experiences, rather than withdrawing from them like a 9 wing would. There’s nothing calm, controlled, or settled about Varang; she wants all life offers and intends to take it.
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