MBTI Type: ESTJ

Cheryl is the uncontested ‘queen bee’ of Riverdale high until Veronica shows up, and even then she does not relinquish her power lightly. She understands that the way to power is through intimidation and fear, but she also compromises and offers ‘trades’ – she will give Veronica good information about how to get Archie out of prison, in exchange for taking over his place as Class President. She operates on facts, and draws swift conclusions from them, banking on blackmail to get her mother out of the house, connecting her to her nana’s “fall,” and eventually forcing her to vacate the mansion entirely (“I have burned down one house, I can do it again”). Cheryl can be self-absorbed but also insecure, deeply anguished about her mother’s hatred of her lesbianism but also determined to live her own life; callous and even cruel in pursuit of what she wants (she shoots the Black Hood, and intends to kill him in the woods; she constricts her mother’s oxygen tube to get what she wants, and she misleads Josie into thinking her boyfriend has devious purposes by scaring her with nasty notes). She can be hysterical under stress, and convinced she is ‘going crazy.’ Past precedent is something Cheryl thrives on – if it has worked in the past, she trusts it to do so in the future. She knows how the world works and how to get what she wants—through negotiation, intimidation, playing a part in school and social hierarchies, joining the Serpents for protection, etc. For a long time, she dwells on and obsesses over the details of her brother’s death, in a need to understand what happened to him. She struggles to cope after losing him, since as her twin, he was so much an active part of her life, both internally and externally. Cheryl wants relatively normal things—to find acceptance and live a normal life, rich of course. She has a lower Ne need to know what is happening around her, and in linking things together. She correctly intuits when people are up to things, though she is not always right about their intended target.

Enneagram: 3w4 so/sp

Everything is about appearances for Cheryl, who also happens to be vain, self-absorbed, and need to put on a front of ‘being okay’ even when she is not. At first, she rebuffs her girlfriend’s attempts to show her kindness or break through her façade; doing so, letting down her guard, would reveal her insecurities and devastated home life. Cheryl conceals from her friends the truth about her mother’s behaviors. She is so desperate to keep up appearances at Christmas, she spends money they do not have on a tree and ornaments. She is ambitious, self-confident, and eager for the spotlight. But her 4 wing can be excessively moody, withdrawn, and melodramatic. If Cheryl has a meltdown, it is a BIG one. She burns down her house. She falls into self-doubt, self-hatred, and self-questioning from time to time. Cheryl assumes she is cured and can never be happy, turning away someone who loves her out of a need to wallow in her own feelings. She can be elitist and full of envy toward the happiness of others; she also sets out, deliberately, to ruin their happiness if she feels shunned, such as after being “not invited” to the cabin, she calls up and tells one of the gang that his girlfriend ‘got it on’ with somebody else. She also invites everyone to a “key party” hoping to break up and cause pain among those involved by showing them how their relationships are on shaky ground, just because hers hasn’t worked out.