Madelaine Petsch first scored with a star-making, 7-season run on “Riverdale” and now she ends her horror trilogy with Friday’s “The Strangers Chapter Three.”

But as in so many things these days: Can this really be The End?

“There are,” Petsch, 31, began in a virtual interview, “no plans currently to continue. I personally like when you leave a character with people wanting more and having questions.

“I don’t want to beat a character into the ground. So I feel really good about this arc for Maya.”

“Strangers” began as a stand-alone horror feature about three masked sociopathic killers who invade homes at random for thrill kills. A sequel arrived in 2018. Then in 2024 Finland’s Renny Harlin, the veteran Hollywood action filmmaker of “Deep Blue Sea” and “Die Hard 2,” ambitiously shot this new “Strangers” trilogy with the three movies filmed altogether.

Was that weird or not?  Filming the trio simultaneously, and then going back with pickups and corrective shots after the first one opened?”

“I love a challenge,” Petsch said. “I think most actors would have that answer. When I’m given three scripts, it’s the most terrifying thing on the planet to think of shooting three films cross border.

“But I also come from TV where I would shoot an episode long before it was supposed to come out, out of order. So I feel like I had the structure to handle it.

“And honestly, I wanted to see if I could, which is probably why I did it.”

As for Maya’s changes through the chapters, “That’s what is such an interesting part of the structure. These films are kind of one long film, broken up into chapters (or acts). So ‘Chapter One’ is Act One, where you’re meeting the girl regularly every day, going to a job interview, struggling with the circumstances, trying to really understand and grappling with where she’s at.

“Chapter Two,” she noted, “is Act Two of the large script. It’s her fighting to survive, her becoming the person she is in ‘Chapter Three,’ where she can be resilient and choose to fight back actively and put herself in a position where she’s not only being defensive, but offensive.

“She is going into the lion’s den to fight. By choice.”

Would she call this a career-defining role?

“Oh, I don’t know. I think that every role defines my career in a different way. She was ultimately a huge challenge. But all my roles have been so different. So I would say yes and no.

“All roles inform who I am as an actor and as a person. And I’ll be honest, my film taste isn’t really indicative of my filmography yet. So I’m looking forward to the future as well.”

Madelaine Petsch as Maya in The Strangers – Chapter 3. Photo Credit: Jordy Clarke/Lionsgate