The Walking Dead won't find a better ending than the CRM storyline it's currently building towards. After almost a decade on screens, The Walking Dead is gearing for more in the groaning '20s. Season 10 of the main series is currently in progress, with an eleventh already confirmed, and Fear The Walking Dead returns for season 6 later this year. Meanwhile, a new two-season spinoff, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, is on its way, and movies starring Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes are also in production.
That's a considerable expansion plan by any TV show's standards, but while The Walking Dead's presence is set to rise over the next 2 years, its viewership continues to fall. The primary show's audience has been in decline for several seasons, and despite an upturn in critical response, is yet to show signs of growth, while Fear The Walking Dead is showing a similar drop in numbers. Despite the grim stats, The Walking Dead remains AMC's top property, but the series is also having to contend with an increasingly rapid revolving door of cast members, losing Lincoln, Chandler Riggs, Danai Gurira and Lauren Cohan (temporarily) in quick succession.
With shrinking ratings and departing stars, some networks might consider winding The Walking Dead up, and although there's no sign of the zombie apocalypse ending just yet, the franchise is currently laying the foundations for a storyline that would act as the perfect conclusion to The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead's CRM Group Explained
Although the CRM name might not be familiar to some The Walking Dead viewers, the group's presence in the franchise will certainly ring some blood-splattered bells. The first appearance of the CRM comes when Rick Grimes spots a helicopter ripping through the skies in season 8, confounded that such a vessel was still operating in the post-apocalyptic landscape. That same mystery group had been periodically nabbing people from Jadis' community and would eventually be responsible for taking a near-death Rick himself. The helicopter that whisked The Walking Dead's protagonist away was emblazoned with a symbol of 3 interconnected rings, which acts as the logo of the CRM.
The Walking Dead producer, Scott M. Gimple, has confirmed that each ring represents a different settlement, and it's likely the three letters of the "CRM" title do the same, just like the 1990s pop group, TLC. Although the group (the CRM, not TLC, obviously) hasn't returned to The Walking Dead since Rick's disappearance, they've enjoyed a meatier role in spinoff series, Fear The Walking Dead. In season 5, Maggie Grace's Al is captured by a member of the CRM named Isabelle, who reveals that her people operate in absolute secrecy with the goal of rebuilding civilization. Anyone that uncovers the presence of the CRM is liable to be killed in order to preserve their secrecy, but Al manages to talk herself out of this fate.
The Walking Dead: World Beyond is already confirmed to revolve around one of the CRM's communities, and characters in the new spinoff's trailer don clothes bearing the same three-ringed symbol as the Rick-stealing chopper. However, it'll surely be the Rick Grimes movie that really cracks open the lid on the CRM and delves into the collective's ethos, location and resources.
The CRM Is The Walking Dead's Natural Conclusion
Although the oncoming rush of new material might suggest otherwise, The Walking Dead cannot continue indefinitely, and the CRM storyline represents the culmination of everything the series has been building towards since season 1 in terms of building a sustainable future. The inevitable end to The Walking Dead is either the zombies taking over or humanity being restored, and the CRM is by far the closest any community has come to putting the world back together. Rick's solo adventures will likely be responsible for bringing together the CRM with Alexandria and the central Walking Dead TV cast, and once that meeting happens, all parties would forge an alliance working towards rebuilding civilization.
The combined efforts of the CRM and Alexandria could dominate the final seasons of The Walking Dead, with Daryl Dixon and whoever else is still alive by that point forced to seize control of the organization due to their excessively brutal methods, before forging ahead in one last push to restore some kind of humanity to the world. If successful, this would bring The Walking Dead as a franchise to a satisfying conclusion in a natural, definitive, and mostly upbeat way. Many friends and loved ones might've lost their lives along the way but, thanks to their meeting the CRM, Rick and his friends would have finally done the impossible and rebuilt a safe world.
It's hard to imagine The Walking Dead's upcoming CRM arc panning out any other way. The show's formula has always been introduce a new community, have the protagonists eject the unfit leadership and then consolidate the newbies into one ever-expanding group. If the CRM were introduced purely as antagonists for Alexandria to defeat, the heroes would end up looking like bad guys for wiping out a group trying to save the world, thus an eventual alliance must be on the cards.
Similarly, it would make little sense to continue The Walking Dead after the CRM arc is seen through to completion. If the CRM succeed, The Walking Dead can't very well carry on if zombies aren't roaming freely across the land, but if they fail, no other group could come close to the organization and stature of the CRM, short of an official country-wide government. Once the CRM material is complete, there's nowhere else for The Walking Dead to go.
Ending With The CRM Would Be (Mostly) In Line With The Comics
The Walking Dead comic series sprung a surprise ending on fans, dropping its last issue without any prior warning that the story would be coming to a close. The conclusion comes immediately in the aftermath of the Commonwealth arc. Eugene makes contact with a much larger community called the Commonwealth, which Rick reluctantly helps liberate from its unjust leadership and unites alongside Alexandria and its allies. With Rick and his diplomacy triumphant, the narrative skips forward many years into the future, showing large swathes of the United States to be completely zombie-free and normality almost restored.
Ending with the CRM story could allow AMC's The Walking Dead to more or less follow the same outline. If "CRM" does represent the initials of the 3 communities, the "C" almost certainly stands for "Commonwealth," who are currently in the process of being introduced on The Walking Dead. The addition of a further 2 communities in the TV adaptation will obviously extend and build upon the Commonwealth comic arc, but if the introduction of the mysterious helicopter-flying group results in the same takeover and eventual journey towards peace, then The Walking Dead's TV series would ultimately find itself in the same place the comics ended.
Just as Robert Kirkman's original story wrapped up on the hopeful note that humanity wasn't entirely doomed, the arrival of the CRM and their mission to rebuild has the potential to propel the TV adaptation towards the same outcome, even if the route taken is slightly different. This would be consistent with how The Walking Dead has already been adapted for TV, with the main story beats remaining untouched, and the details in between being shifted around. Ending on the CRM would also help The Walking Dead avoid moving into entirely new territory after the Commonwealth material has been exhausted. Many live-action adaptations suffer when forced to continue without source material, as seen with Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead will be wary of making the same mistake. Allowing the CRM to act as a finale would circumnavigate this potential pitfall and bring things to an end before falling viewership and loss of lead actors forces AMC's hand.
The Walking Dead season 10 continues with "Squeeze" February 23rd on AMC.