A characterization of a class of optimal three-weight cyclic codes of dimension 3 over any finite field was recently presented in [10]. Shortly after this, a generalization for the sufficient numerical conditions of such characterization was given in [3]. The main purpose of this work is to show that the numerical conditions found in [3], are also necessary. As we will see later, an interesting feature of the present work, in clear contrast with these two preceding works, is that we use some new and non-conventional methods in order to achieve our goals. In fact, through these non-conventional methods, we not only were able to extend the characterization in [10], but also present a less complex proof of such extended characterization, which avoids the use of some of the sophisticated --but at the same time complex-- theorems, that are the key arguments of the proofs given in [10] and [3]. Furthermore, we also find the parameters for the dual code of any cyclic code in our extended characterization class. In fact, after the analysis of some examples, it seems that such dual codes always have the same parameters as the best known linear codes.