What is Spike’s personality type in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Played by James Marsters, Spike is an ESFP 8w7 whose impulsive, pleasure-seeking nature masks surprisingly deep emotional attachments. His dominant Extraverted Sensing (Se) makes him physical, opportunistic, and hungry for excitement, while his Introverted Feeling (Fi) explains his fierce individuality, romantic intensity, and intensely personal loyalties. Spike’s MBTI and Enneagram combination of ESFP 8w7 captures both sides of his personality: the rebellious vampire who lives for violence, sex, and stimulation, and the devoted romantic who will go to extraordinary lengths for the people he loves.
ESFP 8w7 Characters
Why is Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel an ESFP 8w7? 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
Spike is all about living intensely in the physical present; even in his flashback with Drusilla the first time they met, he became turned on by her biting him, and later, after killing his first slayer, his response is excitement, exhilaration, and to want to have sex with Dru for the first time. He loves to fight, and enjoys the physical experience of it; he doesn’t just hunt down Slayers and challenge them because they are the enemy and he wants them dead. Spike wants the experience of fighting them and winning. When Buffy asks how he did it, he accurately discerns that she’s trying to figure out how to avoid dying at a vampire’s hands and argues that there’s not a blow-by-blow that will save her; she will either win a random fight and live, or she will lose it and die. And there’s no blueprint for that. In the flashbacks, we see that his fighting with the earlier Slayers is all reacting to the moment and their moves, engaging intensely, and then enjoying biting them, sucking their blood, or snapping their necks… and then walking away with their personal items (Nikki’s coat).
When Spike figures out it’s Buffy he wants, he starts touching her, provoking her, protecting her, irritating her, and getting physical reactions out of her. When he’s not active, he’s bored and messing around with drinking, eating (even though he doesn’t “need” human food), sex, music, gambling, fast cars, hooked on television, or looking for things to “do.” In his crossover with Angel, he talks about how he had a great plan to get the Ring of Amarra “but then I just got so bored!” so he chucked that and decided to be combative instead. Having a chip put in his head is a huge deal to him, because it removes one of his primary pleasurable activities: being aggressive with everyone. And once he finds out it doesn’t activate when he kills demons, his response is LET’S GO KILL THINGS!
He is also way more tuned into everyone else’s physical responses than anyone else on the show; he notices sexual attraction, fear, tension, and relationship problems, because they’re showing up as subtle facial expressions or “looks” between other characters.
Introverted Feeling
Before turning into a vampire, Spike was an intensely emotional poet, devoted to self-expression through figuring out how to put his feelings into words on paper. And as a vampire, he is still intensely emotional and driven to seek out romantic relationships. When Buffy hits him where it hurts, by throwing cash at him and telling him that she would never be with her, because “you are beneath me,” it triggers his old wound from his first crush rejecting him in the same way; Spike is almost driven to tears, but then he gets mad and wants revenge. And yet, he goes to Buffy’s house with a shotgun to kill her… and when he finds her crying because her mom is sick, he instantly sits down and asks her what is wrong. He can’t go against his internal feeling that Buffy matters to me. Later, he rages against characters who think too much, because he thinks true feelings come from the heart; it’s in your blood and your bones, and that’s where you feel it.
Beyond that, his entire existence revolves around his relationships. First Dru, then Buffy. Even when soulless, he is devoted to them. He stays with Dru for a century, and is so upset when she cheats on him with a chaos demon that he completely falls apart, turns into a drunk, tries to convince Willow to help him cast a spell to bring Dru back to him, and decides that he will hunt her down and torture her until she likes him again.
With Buffy, Spike decides to become “good” because she matters to him. He becomes fond of Dawn and protects her even though it’s not up to him to do so, because he cares about her. His pursuit of a soul comes from a desire to be worthy; he realizes that trying to assault Buffy was awful, and that there is something wrong with him that he decided to correct… by getting himself a soul.
Extraverted Thinking
Once Spike decides what he wants, he is pragmatic and impatient with other people who don’t want to take immediate practical steps to resolve problems. He just wants to know who the enemy is, how to kill them, where to find them, and what he gets as a result. Spike often trades information for cash, and he is brutally matter-of-fact where others want to avoid the truth. Hi confrontation with Buffy and Angel, about how they are lying to themselves about being “friends,” and how that is impossible after an intense love affair, is a good example. He dismisses all of their arguments and tells them that because they’re in love, they can never be “just friends.” They will rip themselves apart.
Spike does sometimes come up with elaborate plans (such as hiring a pedophile vampire to torture Angel and get a magical ring off him that would allow him to walk around in daylight), but he often throws that aside for more immediate gratification. He also sometimes knows something is a terrible idea, but does it anyway, because he wants to do it. (When he decides he is going to shoot Buffy, Harmony points out that it will hurt like hell; Spike argues that a couple of hours of intense pain is “worth it” to kill the Slayer, all because she made him feel like less than a man.)
Introverted Intuition
Spike has both good and bad Ni, in the sense that his insights into people can be very accurate. He can strip away things and expose the truth of them, such as with Buffy and Angel (here is your future if you keep on this path), or by knowing things about Willow and Tara.
But… he can become fixated on things and then massively overestimate his interpretation. Despite Buffy telling him multiple times that she is not into him, and wants nothing to do with him, Spike has settled on an interpretation (“She loves me… she is just in denial … we are so much alike … I can force her to change her mind”) that he pursues until it drives them apart. He sees all of her darkness, depression, and self-destructive behaviors in season six, and accurately decides that she is like him, but then overestimates how much she cares about him and fails to realize he is being “used” and he can’t force her to love him.
The Enneagram 8
I think pre-vampire Spike may have been a 2, a man seeking love, romanticism, who hoped to win others over with flattery and gifts, and somewhat dependent on his mother’s affection for him. But soulless Spike turned into a likable 8.
He hates to feel vulnerable; his anger at Buffy comes from her not respecting him, diminishing him, abusing him, and treating him like dirt. That makes him hurt, but then he takes that “hurt” and turns it into rage. She can’t treat me like this! I will kill her! The same thing happens with Dru. He falls apart and turns into a sobbing mess, but then is furious with himself for being such a weakling and decides that the only way to handle this is to find her, tie her up, and torture her.
Every time someone threatens him, rather than back off, Spike becomes more reckless and aggressive, even when it gets him beat up. Being “chipped” is a huge deal to him, because it emasculates him and limits what he is “allowed” to do. He hates to be contained, controlled, told no, or treated like he is harmless. But he also can become incredibly protective of someone once he decides “they’re mine.” His reasoning is that he can take the hit, so he may as well stand between them and the problem.
The 7 Wing
One of the reasons Spike is so beloved is his outrageous sense of humor; humans are happy meals with legs. He absolutely loves the chaos of Halloween, when everyone in a mask is turned into whatever their costume depicts, because that is so unexpectedly delightful to him. He will insult people, taunt them, or make a mean joke about them, to their face, in the middle of an intense situation, etc. He mocks other people for being too serious, or not having enough fun. When given the chance to steal Dru out of Angelus’s harem, Spike happily does it and then rubs Angelus’s face in it. He needs for things to be constantly exciting, entertaining, and stimulating. Spike would rather provoke someone into a fight than sit around and brood, which makes him a good contrast with Angel.
