Riverdale Showrunner Compares Season 2 Cheryl Blossom to Mad Max: Fury Road's Furiosa

05/19/2017 06:10 pm EDT

Nobody went through the wringer more in the last two episodes of Riverdale's first season than Cheryl Blossom -- and showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says that she'll be "darker" and "more powerful" as a result.

In the finale alone, the grieving sister and daughter attempted suicide -- only to be rescued by Archie Andrews, and then turn that violence around at her family home, burning it in the show's final moments.

"What happens to her in the finale is sort of the most elemental, primal thing," series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explained. "She's baptized in a river of ice and then she steps through and rises from the fires like a phoenix, and I think it absolutely changes her in that she has nothing to lose now. She's burned away what she thinks was her weakness — her love of Jason, her respect of her family. That's all been burnt away now. She's almost like Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa. That's Cheryl, I think, on the other side of the finale. It's a harder, much darker, much more powerful character because her mom was quite cruel to her in season 1 — really cruel to her, and they withheld love from her."

During a visit to the set of Riverdale during the finale, actress Madelaine Petsch, who plays Cheryl, also suggested to Trevor Stines, who plays her brother Jason, that her mother had beaten her -- something Aguirre-Sacasa suggested to us was lost on the cutting room floor, but essentially true.

Now, she's done "mourning the Blossom men," though, and the second-season mystery doesn't revolve around her family (that we know of) -- something that should open up some of her time to create mischief like only Cheryl Blossom can.

Riverdale returns to The CW in the fall, when it will air at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday nights.

More Riverdale:

• Riverdale Star Says Show Saved Her Life
• 5 Craziest Moments In Riverdale's First Season
• Riverdale Recasts Reggie, and Ross Butler Endorses His Replacement
• Riverdale's Casey Cott Upgraded to Series Regular

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.