The Walking Dead's CRM group is going to be at the forefront of multiple stories going forward, but what does their name mean and what do they have to do with the franchise as a whole? Over the past decade on the air, several characters, groups, and stories have come and gone, with little connective tissue between them all. It's usually been one story ends, another begins, but The Walking Dead producers have been building to something entirely different recently.
Beginning with only a helicopter flying overhead, The Walking Dead has since expanded what is now known as the CRM group. Unfolding across both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, details about the helicopter group/CRM group have slowly trickled out, including how they operate, how many resources they have, and how they choose their members. All of this was used as a lead up to a bigger storyline that would not only connect both shows with the upcoming series World Beyond but the Rick Grimes movies as well.
In The Walking Dead universe, it's been confirmed, though not yet on-screen, that CRM stands for the Civic Republic Military, which is the branch of the armed forces of the Civic Republic. CRM was first spotted on a document on Fear the Walking Dead alongside the same three-ring logo that was on the helicopter that took Rick Grimes. The Civic Republic is a singular group consisting of three different communities. While none of the communities have been shown yet, Walking Dead's World Beyond has revealed that one of them is in Nebraska and another might be in New York.
Connecting all three Walking Dead shows is something that AMC seems to be prioritizing as the flagship series heads into its 10th anniversary - but beyond that, it's also about setting up the Walking Dead movie trilogy, which is supposed to see the return of Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne. Those movies should fill in the gaps about what Rick has been doing since he was taken in the helicopter in season 9, along with what the Civic Republic's mission truly is besides rebuilding society.
Everywhere people go in The Walking Dead, someone wants the world to go back to normal in some way, shape, or form. The problem is, not many people are aligned in their goals. In the main show, both the Governor and Negan wanted some semblance of normalcy and so does Fear the Walking Dead's Virginia. However, each of them has been villains - for good reason. The Civic Republic is bigger than all of them combined and they're not focused on the past as much as the future. Getting there just might be dangerous for the heroes on each show.