Maleficent in Once Upon a Time exemplifies the fierce independence and tactical prowess of an ISTP with the grounded assertiveness of an 8w9, as portrayed by Kristin Bauer van Straten. Maleficent’s calculated decisions, controlled power, and quiet intensity reveal a character driven by autonomy and inner strength, the hallmark of a pragmatic strategist who faces danger with cool precision and deep reserves of calm force.
ISTP 8w9 Characters
Why is Maleficent from Once Upon a Time an ISTP? 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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Introverted Thinking
Maleficent operates out of a sense of personal reasoning, rather than objective rules; one example is in the cave when the Dark One leaves them as fodder for the demon that lives off sucking the souls out of dark creatures, Maleficent reasons out that one of them should draw its attention, and the other two can escape and rescue the third. When the demon fixes its eyes on hers, she says “I knew it” (implying she has the darkest soul of the three) and then assumes her friends won’t rescue her, because why would they? She does not argue morality so much as she states the facts of what happened, when she encounters Snow and Charming (“You took my child,” “You betrayed me,” “This is the consequence of your actions”). She has clean, operational spells without flourishes or exaggerations, that does exactly what she wanted them to do, including walking up to Aurora and stabbing her finger on the spindle to put her to sleep. When a situation or an argument is not worth it, Maleficent retreats into silence or transforms into a dragon to wait. If her actions backfire, she absorbs the outcome and shifts her focus, rather than play the victim.
Extraverted Sensing
She directs her power in physical ways, through attacking people, transforming into a dragon, marching up to them and confronting them in person, blasting them with fire, using her wings to knock them off her feet, and by defending her territory. She doesn’t know who the father of her child is, because she conceived her child in dragon form, and has never sought to uncover his identity. When her daughter transforms into a dragon, Maleficent “knows what that is like” from personal lived experience, and goes to console and help her return to her human form. When Aurora’s parents betray her and steal her egg, Maleficent responds instantly by attacking them, transforming into a human and begging them to spare her child, and then by going after them once her daughter has disappeared. She gets destroyed in the process. Elsewhere, she draws the demon’s attention and fights it in the cave. She also gets taken in by the Dark One’s promises to give them a happily ever after, because she evaluates him on a surface level…
Introverted Intuition
… yet also “knows things” about other characters. She knows she has the darkest heart out of her, Ursula, and Cruella. She knows the Dark One often has a contingency plan. Her focus remains fixated on a single ideal outcome to her situation, that of finding her daughter and reclaiming their lost years; but when she meets her, she is baffled that her daughter wants retaliation for the past, rather than to move forward and claim a new future. Now that she has achieved her goal, and imagined how it would be, Maleficent wants to focus ahead instead of dwelling in the past. Her worldview is that trusting others invites them to betray you, and she holds firm to that conviction, which plays out as true in her dealings with Snow and Charming. She assumes rulers will always choose power over morality, and is angry to be proven right when they steal her daughter away and use her as part of a spell to protect Emma. And her entire arc centers on one thing, finding her daughter.
Extraverted Feeling
When her daughter doesn’t want to hug her and be friends at once, Maleficent is shocked, since she naively assumed her daughter would share her enormous relief, love, and joy at being reunited. She shows fleeting moments of vulnerability and emotion, when she pleads with Snow for the life of her child after they steal the egg, begs them to not “destroy” a human life, and is overcome with grief at losing her child. Maleficent plays along with Cruella and Ursula for awhile, agreeing that they all deserve happy endings, but ultimately winds up alone again. She wants Snow and Charming to suffer, and to know what it feels like to experience great loss, so she torments them in small ways, by withholding her forgiveness and dangling the truth over their heads.
The Enneagram 8
Maleficent is all about guarding her boundaries, keeping people out of her cave, and not letting down her defenses. She reluctantly pairs up with two other witches, but never trusts them, assumes she is the “worst” of them, and remarks that good people never know what to do, because they are bound by the limits of being decent. She doesn’t have that problem, yet is appalled that they would harm an innocent child, because she has a soft spot for innocence and her daughter (the vulnerable side of an 8). She seeks vengeance and wants others to pay for their wrongs and slights against her; she attacks Aurora and forces her into an eternal sleep. Maleficent turns her back on others in her own interest, and tries to use leverage (the contents of the magical box) to get what she wants from Emma and her parents. Where others shrink from danger, she faces it without fear, matching her level of aggression to the threat.
The 9 Wing
The instant she no longer senses a threat, she eases her aggression and retreats into herself, into her cavern, or refuses to engage with other people. There is a resignation to her belief that she is going to die (and shock, when Ursula saves her life). Maleficent becomes somewhat inert when thwarted, lapsing into apathy and a lack of effort, not wanting to expound more energy than necessary to take down her enemies. Rather than vent all about her pain, she states it quietly but firmly and with anguish. She leaves or refuses to engage rather than escalate a situation. And she does not vent, spiral, or fall apart. She endures, lives with her pain, and waits for the right moment to avenge herself.
The Sorceress and the Egg
Maleficent is another one of those arcs that could have been greater than the result; she is under-used, yet her story has the most heartache. Snow and Charming “done her wrong,” to prove to us that heroes aren’t always heroic, and sometimes work to their own advantage. But the actress makes the most of the character and leaves an impression. Some of it is downright weird, though (a baby inside an egg?), even for Once Upon a Time!
