Yoda personality type: INFJ

The first thing Yoda does when Luke finds him on Dagobah is rummage through his supplies and squabble over a little lamp. Luke thinks he has met a swamp gremlin. He has met the most powerful Jedi alive, running a test. That trick is classic Yoda: hide the lesson inside something silly, then wait to see who you are when you think nobody important is watching.

INFJ fits him best. Introverted intuition leads, the function that sees patterns and where they are heading. Yoda reads futures, warns that young Anakin’s future is clouded, and senses danger in fear long before anyone else does. He talks in compressed riddles because, for an Ni user, the conclusion arrives whole and the explanation is the hard part.

Extraverted feeling is his second function, and it shows in how he guides people instead of ordering them. He reads Luke’s impatience at a glance, and his famous line about trying is less a rule than a mirror held up to Luke’s doubt. He cares a lot about how his students grow, which is why his failures hurt so much.

Under all that sits a 5 with a 4 wing that adds the eccentric streak. Fives cope with the world by understanding it and pulling back to conserve energy. After he loses to Palpatine in the Senate chamber, Yoda does not regroup or rally anyone. He exiles himself to a swamp planet, to watch and wait for decades. That retreat is pure 5, and it is also his blind spot.

The prequels are hard on him. The Jedi under his watch grew rigid and political, and he missed a Sith Lord running the government next door. But as a ghost in The Last Jedi he finally laughs at the old ways, calls lightning down on the sacred tree and tells Luke that failure is the best teacher. A Five learning to stop using knowledge as a fortress: that is growth at nine hundred years old.

Some argue INTJ, since he is so detached and calculating, and it is a fair point for prequel Yoda. But INTJs lead with systems. Yoda leads with people, reading them and testing them, and his riddles are always tuned to the listener.