Chanul

**Chanul** are a race of spirits that appear in the show *Elena of Avalor*. The Chanul are inhabitants of the Spirit World. In the Ever Realm, they have the role of acting as a spirit guide for humans and pivot them towards the right path.

## Background

### Behavior

All chanuls have a carefree and educative personality due to their roles as advisors and guides, but like most sentient races, there can be different types of chanul; some may even exhibit unique facets that mirrors the human the chanul is paired with. Not all chanul are necessarily spirit guides, as was the case with Bobo, but they are capable of becoming one. Every human has their own chanul, although an individual chanul may be paired with more than one human. Despite this, the spirit guide has a connection with their humans, thus they know where their human companion is at all times.

In general, a chanul's role is to be the human's conscience; the chanul is responsible for helping the human consider their decisions and actions, but it is up to their human to decide what they must do.

### Physical appearance

Most chanuls seen have the form of glowing, anthropomorphic animals with a cyan-blue color scheme. When a chanul is summoned, the size may be subject to change, as was seen with Zuzo - when he was summoned by Sofia and Mateo, he was as large as a wolf; when he appeared to Princess Elena, he was half the size of Elena like that of a real fox, while other times Zuzo was no bigger than her own head. The notable difference between a normal chanul and a spirit guide chanul is the presence of magical stripes across the spirit guide's body, which will light up when a chanul is being summoned. Some chanul also appear to wear jewelry or earrings.

### Powers and abilities

As spirits, chanul are invisible to humans, including their own human counterparts. They are capable of disappearing and reappearing wherever they please. The only beings capable of seeing chanul are the wizards that summon them or humans imbued with special magic like Elena. Chanel can also practice magic of their own via special items from the Spirit World. Despite their transportation abilities, normal chanul cannot leave the spirit world because of their spiritual nature; spirit guide chanul are capable of entering the human world and bringing others to the spirit world through the use of their magic stripes.
Chanul are even able to sense their charges and know what they're up to, sensing if one of their charges is about to make a good or bad decision.

## Appearances

### *Sofia the First*

In the special *Elena and the Secret of Avalor*, Alacazar instructs Sofia to seek out his own chanul, Zuzo, so that the princess can learn how to free Elena from the Amulet of Avalor.

### *Elena of Avalor*

Zuzo is a prominent character in the show. Having transferred to Elena as his human double, Zuzo provides Elena with advice during her career as Avalor's ruler. Elena and Mateo are the only ones who can see Zuzo, the former being due to residual magic the Amulet of Avalor left on her and the latter being from his affinity with magic.

In the episode "Spirit Monkey Business", Elena enters the Spirit World and encounters other chanul, including the melancholic Cacahuate (who is Mateo's chanul) and the ambitious Bobo. It is also explained that chanuls attend a school on the spirit guide branch of the Spirit World in order to become spirit guides themselves, and those that graduate earn their magic stripes in recognition.

During "Flower of Light", it's seen that not all chanuls are like Zuzo and the others, when they go rogue the main differences are their color, instead of being transparent blue they are green and instead of giving good advice they instruct people to do bad things in the case with Sanza.

## Trivia

* In southern Mexico, the chanul is an animal spirit that was believed by the Tzotzil people to share a part of a human's soul, effectively making it the animal companion to that human. It was said that whatever happened to the chanul also affected their human counterpart.
* In *Elena and the Secret of Avalor*, Zuzo appeared with a significantly different appearance instead of how he normally looks in *Elena of Avalor*. According to Craig Gerber, this was because the *Sofia the First* crew was the one that made the special as opposed to the *Elena of Avalor* crew.