Jim Hopper personality type: ESTP

Hopper’s first scene sets the tone. He wakes up hungover in a trailer, washes pills down with a beer, and strolls into the station late. Then a boy goes missing, and the lazy small-town cop turns into the most stubborn man in Indiana.

Grief is the engine. Hopper lost his daughter Sara to cancer and could do nothing about it, and the enneagram 8 in him treats every case after that as a chance to fight what he could not fight then. Eights protect others with force and fear being helpless. The 9 wing is the part that just wants peace and quiet, a TV dinner, and nobody bothering him. As an ESTP, he lives in the moment and reacts with his whole body. He breaks into Hawkins Lab, knocks out a guard, and trespasses his way to the truth. He sneaks into the morgue, cuts open the body in Will’s coffin, and finds stuffing. In season four he survives a Soviet prison camp in Kamchatka mostly by refusing to die.

Watch how he treats Eleven in the cabin. He wants her safe, so he locks the doors and sets rules, and then he is stunned when she fights them. An Eight protects by controlling, and Hopper learns slowly that control is not the same as care. His soft side is a rough instrument. He wants to connect and has no idea how, which is why he yells at Eleven, smashes things, and writes his feelings in a letter instead of saying them. He hides Eleven in a cabin with a list of rules and no real plan for her future.

Some call him an ISTJ, pointing to his rules and routines. I see it, especially in season two. But Hopper breaks his own rules constantly and makes his best moves on impulse. The rules are a dad trying to be someone else. The impulse is Hopper. He ends the series alive, which nobody would have bet on. He proposes to Joyce at Enzo’s and takes a job as chief of police in Montauk. Coffee, contemplation and, finally, some peace.