Eric Bana’s Kyle Turner from Untamed is a complex, rugged investigator whose pragmatic approach and strong boundaries define both his professional and personal life. Kyle is a character who balances detachment with occasional emotional intensity. This character analysis explores how his MBTI and Enneagram traits shape his investigative style, interpersonal interactions, and rugged, determined persona.
ISTP 9w8 Characters
Why is Kyle Turner from Untamed 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.
The only ads you will ever see on this page are for my books. If you want to learn more about MBTI or Enneagram types, please support my work. Book sales are how I keep this site ad-free!
Introverted Thinking
Kyle goes about things in a pragmatic, detached manner. He just wants to investigate his case, but not to play nice with the other investigating officers while doing it. His boss had to save his job when he went off the rails after the death of his son, and he is surly and unpleasant to his superiors whenever he can get away with it. After a girl falls off a cliff, Kyle insists on investigating and continues digging into it, even after others have given up on the case or want to write it off. He follows the clues through the wilderness, and continues to form conclusions and judgments that lead him to an unexpected source. Others find him abrasive, and complain that he doesn’t share information between departments.
Extraverted Sensing
Our introduction to him is riding up the cliff on a horse. Then he straps himself into a rope and goes down the cliff face to see what the body looks like, tangled up in the climber’s ropes. He is hands-on, and somewhat reckless and impulsive—he grabs a gun and fires it past someone’s head, threatens another man with a gun under his chin outside a hotel, and rides through a storm to find his coworker after she takes out his horse without permission and gets lost in an old mine. Kyle has an occasional fling with a local woman, but their agreement is that they leave personal stuff at the door and don’t discuss work. He often turns up where he’s unexpected, challenges people in person, and urges his new partner to be more engaged with her environment. He and his son used to trek around the woods, where he taught his son to hunt and fish and to watch the stars. Sometimes, he gets drunk and calls his ex at 2am.
Introverted Intuition
Kyle doesn’t draw conclusions so much as he follows the sensory, concrete details from one clue to the next—he didn’t know who killed his son until he found footage of what happened to Caleb. He has a sense that there’s more to this case than first appears, and wants to follow all the clues, but does not care to discuss the details, speculate about what happened, or even share his suspicions with anyone.
Introverted Feeling
He is… not a people person. When people open up to him emotionally, he gets quiet, refuses to share his own experiences, or turns on the radio to drown them out and shut them up. He doesn’t tell anyone about his son, and doesn’t want to talk to his partner about it when she mentions it. But he does care about her; he talks her out of being panicked so she can save herself in a tunnel (but, he starts out with logical information – you got yourself in, you can get yourself out; calm down and breathe). He lets her and her kid crash at his house, and is nice to her son. When his wife tries to commit suicide, he tells her that he is a little annoyed that she tried to beat him to it. His inability to deal with his feelings contributed to his divorce.
The Enneagram 9
Kyle is all about enforcing his boundaries, ignoring anyone who wants to get a rise out of him, calmly dealing with bad situations, complacently ignoring his superiors, and somehow managing to get away with it. He just stares at people who try to bully him, then goes and does what he wants to anyway. Rather than be concerned for losing his job, he drinks, is obnoxious and unpleasant, and doesn’t care what others think or if they like him or not. Kyle just drowns them out or puts up a wall. He does not like to be upset, and doesn’t like it when Naya disrupts all the squatters and he then has to deal with them being mad.
The 8 Wing
Kyle has a lot of 8. He doesn’t just ignore people, he pushes against them in return, to get them to respect his boundaries. But ultimately, he wants to be left alone to do his own thing like a 9. He is unambitious, but driven—and he can be excessive, temperamental, and violent. When he gets upset, he punches people in the face, slams them against trees, or threatens to shoot them. He is as tough as nails and hates to admit that he has strong emotions about his son, or that he’s furious with himself for allowing that to happen to the boy. It’s hard for him to open up to anyone, but he reaches occasional moments of sensitivity toward animals and little kids, for whom he has sympathy due to their innocence.
A Grouch With a Heart of Gold
Kyle seems like a jerk at first glance, someone who doesn’t play nice with others, tolerate fools idly, or even respect his boss. But his work ethic is admirable and his dogged determination to solve the case even if it crosses boundaries he finds uncomfortable lets him figure out the who, the where, and the why by the end of the eight-hour first season. (Alas, the show was terrific for seven episodes and then went to hell in the final 20 minutes. Oh well.)
