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ZoeChua

Welcome back to another entry of Just Add Magic NPG's. Today I'm going to be doing something a little different... I'm going to propose a character from the spin-off series, Mystery City. The rules for the main series still apply, and the characters still need to compete against those from the main series.

What's The Work?[]

Just Add Magic: Mystery City is a spin-off of the Prime Video original series Just Add Magic. It takes place almost immediately after the original series, where Kelly, Hannah and Darbie had recently ended their era as the Cookbook's protectors, the book moved on to a new trio of protectors, and Zoe Chua and her mother Erin were moving to Bay City to live with Nick Sellitti, Erin's fiancée.

And wouldn't you know it, Zoe's one of the new protectors, alongside her new stepbrother Leo Sellitti, and their downstairs neighbor Ish Gupta.

This write-up is for the leader, and the Jewish member of the new trio: Zoe Walters.

Who's Is Zoe Chua-Sellitti Walters?[]

Zoe Walters was introduced in Season 3 of the main series (specifically in the episode "Just Add Codes") as the daughter of Erin Chua (who took over Mama P's and turned it into Springtown Coffee after Mama P herself sold her restaurant and skipped town), and a seemingly unimportant character.

The season made it seem like her mother, Erin Chua, would be the main antagonist and yet another evil restaurant owner hiding under a facade of friendliness and pleasantless, similar to the likes of Mama P and Noelle Jasper. Spoiler alert: she wasn't. Erin's a Sheep in Sheep's Clothing who actually was the friendly, well-meaning business lady she appeared to be.

Anyway, Zoe and her mother moved around a lot due to her mother's job. Her mother would constantly open stores, which were always successful. At a certain point, they'd settle down in Saffron Falls for one of their stops. While in Saffron Falls, Zoe attended the same school as Kelly and Darbie (and previously Hannah): Rockbury Middle School, attended Kelly's birthday party, and noticed the magic cookbook (which Kelly claimed was a school project she was created). During the season's penultimate episode, It's revealed that Zoe and her mother were moving to Bay City as her mother was getting remarried, and was going to work for the head office of Bay City. The two of them officially leave town in the season finale, and while packing some of the boxes, Zoe noticed that the cookbook had mysteriously appeared in one of them, and they tried to return it to Kelly, thinking she (Zoe) had packed it by mistake.

If we were going off her appearances in Season 3 alone, she'd simply be a neutral character, and thus not rank anywhere on the Admirable Standard... however the finale would make Zoe the new main protector of the cookbook, and "New Protectors" special, alongside the Mystery City miniseries would provide her with some actual heroics to back her up, and thus she became an actual hero.

What Makes Her Close To Pure Good?[]

  • When the cookbook mysteriously appears in one of her moving boxes, she mails the book back to Kelly, thinking she (Zoe) had accidently taken Kelly's property, and sends her a note apologizing for doing so.
  • When her mother's concerned about her upcoming wedding, Zoe assures her that she looked great, and that she was simply nervous.
  • After Kelly, Hannah and Darbie find Zoe and explain that she was one of the new protectors for the cookbook, Zoe understandably doesn't believe them at first, but when the book repeatably opens itself to a "Make It Hot Dogs" recipe, she decides to cook the recipe so that the weather would warm up, and her mother's wedding wouldn't be postponed. However, she didn't count on the magic recipe also causing people's emotions to heat up
  • After Zoe's recipe indirectly causes a blackout and leads to her mother cancelling her wedding, she immediately looks for the recipe's riddle, then searches for the another recipe to reverse her spell.
    • She finds the "Gazpa-Chill Soup" recipe, and gets Leo and Ish to help her cook it, in order to reverse the effects of her previous spell (Make It Hot Dogs), save her mother's wedding, and get everyone in town to stop fighting and being so hostile. (having their emotions "heated up")
  • After finding out her late father was a protector and was hiding a blueprint with notes, she wanted to learn what the notes were for and finish his work by finding what he was looking for.
  • She and Ish would learn about how Ian Maddox was a protector from 1875 and used to be friends with his partners Clint and Folsom Wesson, before the latter two got greedy and created a Sour'Au starter, which made them wealthy but also caused a gold mine to collapse and numerous deaths. And when they're informed that Ian hid the starter in the future for later protectors (like them) to destroy before the Wessons find it, and set up a complex scavenger hunt to find three coins in order to access it, the two of them agree to track down the coins and the starter and protect the town.
  • After losing her stepfather's camera -- as part of the downside for a spell she and her partners created -- she takes full responsibility for what happened, and understands how important the camera was to him, and how he didn't want to be too harsh as to make Zoe dislike him, and even apologizes for losing the camera. All this, in spite of the lost camera technically not even being her fault. She doesn't even try to create an excuse or justification for it.
  • While under a spell that gives her enhanced hearing, she overhears a student running in the hall, and pulls a girl out of the way before the other student hits or bumps into her.
  • After learning that her late father used to have a close friend named Mitch Shipman, she'd use a spell to appear as an adult so she could set up an arrangement with Mitch, and learn some information about her father and Mitch. Though Zoe does learn that her father fabricated his entire past, and even his name.
  • After she and her partners finally manage to reach Unity Station, and get ahold of the Sour'Au starter, they planned on destroying the starter by magically super heating it, so it couldn't be used for additional harm. The attempt backfires, but it was still worth a shot.
  • While looking back in 1875 to see her father's (Ian Maddox) attempts at destroying the starter, she learned that Ian Maddox magically traveling to the future and staying there for too long had made him sick (which eventually led to his death), and upon learning he had willingly stayed in the future to be with Erin and to raise Zoe, she cries over learning this, but was glad to know that her father loved her that much.
  • After Pierce and Cody Hamilton attract some gold with the Sourd'Au recipe and accidently endanger Bay City by causing the power to go out, electronics to stop working, and buildings to collapse (due to gold being common in wires, pipes, microchips and even electronics and buildings), both protector trios would cook multiple spells to teleport into houses and buildings, freeze time to take back the starter, and telepathically move metal to fix damage caused by the starter, allowing Zoe, Ish and Leo to teleport their neighbors and the restaurant customers out of the buildings and subways to safety while time's frozen.
  • She was willing to go back to 1875 and convince Ian Maddox (aka her father James Walters) to not travel to the future to prevent anyone else from using the Sourd'Au starter for nefarious purposes, despite knowing full well that Ian would never met her mother, and thus Zoe would never born and cease to exist in the process. Granted Ish and Leo stopped Zoe before the latter could go through with it, but still, props for being willing to do so at all. Nobody else ever made or attempted to make a sacrifice that big before. Even Kelly, Hannah and Darbie can't claim they ever did or attempted to do this. An act like this will definitely make Zoe pass the Admirable Standards.
  • After regaining the Sourd'Au starter, they six of them decided to repurpose it so that instead of stealing riches, it shared riches: in this case, it would share magic.

Preventions[]

  • Zoe's got tons of jerkish moments throughout the series, most of which involve her partners Ish and Leo. She's also very cynical and anti-social.
    • She can also be very impatient.
    • She's constantly looking down on Leo and his obsession over superheroes and comics (which he insists on being called "graphic novels")
      • When the trio decides to start to food fund to earn money to buy for the magic recipes, she harshly shoots down Leo's idea to sell his graphic novel to a publisher, claiming that "nobody is buying a comic written by a kid".
    • She's repeatedly insisting the importance of mystery involving her late father's plan and finding the Sour'Au starter, even if it means dismissing what others think.
      • She refuses to let Ish post the blueprint to her channel for her followers to identify, insisting it needs to stay a secret.
      • While in the library searching for the book her dad hid, she gets into an argument with Ish, which leads to them getting thrown out of the reference section. When this happens, she blames Ish for it.
      • After learning that Cody and Lexi Hamilton were descendants of the Wesson family, she instantly assumes they were evil, and that they were onto her and her friends. She even tries to get Ish to break off her friendship with Lexi.
        • After Lexi starts to get a change of and feels her father's obsession is going too far to the point where she gives the protectors their coin, Zoe's still not completely convinced Lexi was on their side, though she was still willing to listen to Lexi's warning about her father's intentions.
        • Then later, when Zoe realizes all of her coins went missing, she realizes Lexi had taken them, and immediately loses faith in her.
    • While tutoring a boy on math for a test, she gets frustrated over the boy not understanding the material, to the point where he walks out on her.
    • She hypocritically gets upset at Leo for cooking a magic recipe without her and Ish, even though she was planning on cooking a magic recipe without him. Ish even calls her out on this.
    • After finding and cooking "Early Memory Mashed Bananas", she and Ish eventually get tired and unapologetically leave Leo to clean everything up.