Will Byers’ personality has been one of the most quietly compelling character studies in Stranger Things. Portrayed by Noah Schnapp, Will consistently displays the hallmarks of an ISFJ personality type paired with Enneagram 9w1, shaping the way he survives trauma, navigates friendship, and clings to meaning in a world that keeps trying to tear him apart. From his reliance on memory and symbolism to his deep emotional attunement to others, Will’s ISFJ 9w1 traits explain why he endures through loyalty, restraint, and an unwavering desire for peace rather than power. For fans interested in Stranger Things, Will Byers offers one of the clearest and most emotionally grounded examples of an ISFJ 9w1 modern television.
ISFJ 9w1 Characters
Why is Will Byers from Stranger Things an ISFJ? 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 Sensing
Will cares a lot about his childhood routines, behaviors, and symbols a lot longer than his friends. They are into girls, and he still wants to draw, to play D&D, and tries to interest them in their old campaigns. He wants things to stay the same and not to have to grow up. His music, drawings, and interests are not hobbies to him, but emotional anchors. Even when he gets pulled into the Upside Down, he survives by returning to a place that feels safe (home, and Castle Byers). Even his coming out scene references their previous experiences together and how much spending time with them all has meant to him; and he has to go back in his memories and see himself with his mother and Jonathan to find the courage to break free of Vecna’s mental imprisonment.
He communicates through memory-based symbolism, his drawings being literal artifacts from the D&D world that he finds appealing (creating himself as Will the Wise, and seeing Mike as the “heart” of the group in his drawing about them all fighting a dragon in a fantasy world). When possessed, Will holds onto himself and uses his body to communicate. He taps Morse code to warn his friends, reacts to the cold, and responds to familiar memories, because his friends can “reach” him through their shared experiences (all of them remind him of a particular moment they shared and what it meant to them on an emotional level, connecting with his SiFe).
His insights are built on his sensory impressions; how his skin and body feels whenever he senses a bad thing is coming toward them, and he accurately describes those things to his friends. He knows the Mind Flayer and Vecna are close, because he knows how it ‘feels’ physically to be around them. In season five, after Mike tells him that being able to see through the eyes of others has made him a ‘sorcerer,’ Will then realizes that if Vecna can control others by inhabiting their bodies, he might do it too, and he takes physical possession of Vecna, both in the mind world and in the real world. He kills the demogorgons the same way, by using what Vecna did to his human sacrifices and snapping their limbs before breaking their necks. Si users think that if something worked for someone else, it will work for me.
Exraverted Feeling
In season one, Jonathan asks Will if he really likes to go to ball games with his dad, or if he just does it to keep their dad happy; Will admits he doesn’t like it much, no. He likes what other people like, to make them like him more. This is part of his Fe, noticing what other people want and need and adjusting himself to it. He rarely expresses his own pain unless it becomes unavoidable, because it would disrupt the group or cause others to suffer. Will doesn’t want to be a burden; he apologizes for things that aren’t even his fault and tries to keep the group together and not be a burden on anyone else.
In season four, Will knows he has romantic feelings for Mike, but rather than burden him with them, he instead builds up Mike’s feelings about El, reassuring him he is the love of her life and her anchor, that he is the ‘heart’ of their group, and has a special role to play. Then, when El needs to hear from Mike while fighting Vecna, he tells Will to remind her of what he thinks about her, and how much he loves her, and how she’s his hero, even though doing this causes Will pain.
Vecna’s attack on Will involves his ‘coming out’ to his friends and all of them turning their backs on him because of it. He has to be honest about his feelings and needs with them, and explain to them why he’s telling them this now, in order to see them NOT reject him, so that he can no longer be scared or give Vecna a foothold in season five. When Will sees into Henry’s past, he tries to convince him to come over to their side. He likens Henry to himself, a victim, and says he doesn’t have to be evil, but can choose to be good. This is Fe attempting to persuade someone into choosing what’s best for everyone, by clinging to what they have in common. It doesn’t work, but at least he tried.
Introverted Thinking
Will tries to understand what happened to him by internally processing it, and in later seasons as he gets older, by trying to figure out what it means. He wants to make sense of things, and is good at explaining them concisely when he has an idea. His explanations to Mike about his role in the group, what’s wrong with Billy, the plans the Mind Flayer has for them all, and how to defeat Henry are all well-thought out, rational explanations. He reasons that he has to be honest with his friends, to find the courage to stand up to Vecna. Will says that the further away from Hawkins he got, the more immune he was to the Mind Flayer and to Vecna’s influence.
Extraverted Intuition
Will shows flashes of intuition across the series, but most of it happens in season three, where he senses that the piece of the Mind Flayer that escaped from his body has survived separate from the Upside Down, and is now among them. He theorizes Billy is his host, and he is not in control over himself, which is also based on his own personal experiences with the Mind Flayer (Si). Mike has to tell him he can use his connection with Vecna to sabotage him. Otherwise, Will struggles to grow up, since change terrifies him. He fears the unknown and what his friends might do if they learn the truth about his sexuality. And he lashes out when he feels like things are out of his control, all examples of inferior Ne under stress.
The Enneagram 9
Will is sweet, generous, and complaint; his mother remarks on how kind he is, even though he’s “strange.” He also hates discord in the group and becomes upset when his friends fight. Rather than take part, he pulls away from them and internalizes the conflict rather than picking a side. Will doesn’t want to alienate any of them, and does not consider himself Mike’s best friend, even though he is. He simply doesn’t think he is that important to the group, or to anyone else. (9s often struggle with not feeling as if they take up much space in anyone else’s mental landscape; they under-estimate how much others care about them.)
He minimizes his own needs to preserve harmony, and even when deeply unhappy, doesn’t ruin anyone else’s day. Will also disassociates when he’s overwhelmed. He runs away, goes to his fort in the woods, and breaks down into a crying fit and tears apart Castle Byers in a rare fit of temper. His greatest fear is losing his friends, being forgotten, and being left behind as the rest of them “grow up.” He habitually agrees with others and go along with them, and Jonathan has to remind him to consider his own wants, needs, and likes first.
The 1 Wing
Will is not as strong as Mike on the idea that friends don’t tell lies, but he firmly believes certain behaviors are wrong, and that they should do the right thing. He feels guilty and often takes responsibility for the things done “through him,” even though Vecna or the Mind Flayer acted without his permission. He is rarely angry, but does erupt in season three at his friends, when they want to talk about girls instead of paying attention to the D&D campaign he spent hours coming up with for them. He storms out rather than want to talk about it.
In the final season, Will sees Henry as possibly someone to save, and even though Henry has killed people, tormented him, kidnapped him, and assaulted him, Will thinks he should reach out to him and try to persuade him to do the right thing. The good thing. Something to redeem himself. To sever his connection to evil and help them. It feels like the right thing to do, so he does it.
If you’re interested in other Stranger Things characters, click the tag below.
