What Is the CRM? The Walking Dead Villains Explained

"Security and secrecy above all" is the motto of the CRM: the Civic Republic Military. The three-ring helicopter group that airlifted an injured Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) away on season 9 of The Walking Dead is shrouded in secrecy, but spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond shed light on the mysterious organization that calls itself "the last light of the world." The black-clad helmeted soldiers return in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live — with Rick among their ranks. When the new series premieres Feb. 25 on AMC, burning questions about Rick's whereabouts will be answered and CRM secrets will be declassified. 

Here is your CRM crash course for everything you need to know about the Walking Dead Universe villains.

The Helicopter

After waking up from a coma in the "Days Gone Bye" pilot episode of The Walking Dead, Rick witnessed a still-operational helicopter when he trekked into post-apocalyptic Atlanta on horseback. He wouldn't see another helicopter until he watched a black chopper fly overhead in The Walking Dead season 8 episode 5, "The Big Scary U."

The "A"

"We take. We don't bother," Scavenger leader Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) told Rick when the group tracked the missing Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) to a junkyard in The Walking Dead season 7 episode "New Best Friends," where a helipad was visible among the Heaps (more on that later). After Jadis captured Rick in season 8 episode 6, "The King, the Widow, and Rick," she imprisoned him inside a storage container marked with an "A."

The Three-Rings Symbol

The symbol with the three interconnected rings first appeared on canned food in the possession of the junkyard-dwelling Jadis in season 8 episode 10, "The Lost and the Plunderers." Savior Simon (Steven Ogg) questioned Jadis about the helipad and the solar panels, but Jadis said only that the Heaps was "a dump." 

Season 8 episode 14, "Still Gotta Mean Something," revealed Jadis lived inside a storage container converted into clean living quarters well-supplied with cans of applesauce... and a suitcase. Jadis prepared another "A" — a captured Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — and then signaled the helicopter with the three-ring symbol, but it departed without her.

"A" or "B"

In season 9 episode 2, "The Bridge," Jadis spotted a helicopter circling in the night sky. In season 9 episode 3, "Warning Signs," she reached a helicopter pilot over walkie talkie. "What do you have? An 'A' or a 'B'?" the pilot asked, telling her: "No pickups. But the deal still stands. Do you have an 'A' or a 'B'?"

Jadis responded that she had nothing to trade. The helicopter pilot told her she would need an "A" in exchange for extraction.

The Hidden City

Jadis later confessed to Father Gabriel that she traded people for food and supplies. "Gabriel, leave with me. There's another place. It's far from here, but if we go together we can get there," she told him of this secret civilization where they could "have a life like you can't imagine." It was the first indirect mention of the Civic Republic, a hidden city of over 200,000 survivors. But when he went to alert Rick, Jadis knocked Gabriel out and said: "All this time... I thought you were a 'B.'" (Like Rick and Negan before him, Gabriel was classified as an "A" when Jadis almost had him bitten by a walker.) "There's only one place left for me to go," Jadis told Gabriel, "and you're the price of admission."

The Trade

After Rick led a zombie herd to a bridge he then blew up to save his family and friends, Jadis found him alive in the riverbed. "I have a 'B.' Not an 'A.' I never had an 'A,'" Jadis told the pilot over walkie talkie, adding her "B" was "hurt, but he's strong." The CRM helicopter then shuttled Rick and Jadis away from Virginia. In The Walking Dead: World Beyond episode "Who Are You?," Jadis confirmed she traded Rick to the Civic Republic's army for admission into the CR: "I gave the CRM something very valuable, and I got a new life," she said. "I know that the Civic Republic is the last light of the world, and my purpose is to create a new era on this planet." 

The Reclamation Team

Fear the Walking Dead season 5 episode 5, "The End of Everything," saw Althea (Maggie Grace) encounter CRM soldier and pilot Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon) in Texas after she came across drop maps marked with the CRM logo. Isabelle and Beckett (James Armstrong) were part of Ground 17, but per protocol, Isabelle killed Beckett when he became a "threat to operational security."

"Nobody just walks away, let alone with the maps he carried," Isabelle told Al, explaining that the maps "make what we have, what we're working towards, vulnerable." She then warned the journalist: "If you see someone wearing this jacket, you should be afraid. We are a force who are not living for ourselves or for now. You have your stories, already making every day the past. We have the future."

Isabelle managed to call off a "reclamation team," tasked with covering up all traces of the CRM's existence — no matter who they have to kill. Al later summoned Isabelle to airlift her friends out of the blast zone when nuclear warheads were detonated in the season 6 episode "The Beginning," and in the season 7 episode "Reclamation," Al and Isabelle went AWOL — going on the run together, knowing that the CRM would "never stop looking" for them. Because no one gets away alive.

The Civic Republic

The CR made its first appearance in The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1 episode 3, "The Tyger and the Lamb." Among the population of 200,000 was CRM Lt. Col. Elizabeth Kublek (Julia Ormond). "We have energy, water, medicine, transport, the Council, the courts, the schools, culture, currency, an economy, agriculture, manufacturing, law... we are the last light of the world," Kublek revealed. "We are the last hope. And we, us, enable this population of over 200,000 souls to live. To create the future."

In The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1 episode 4, Elton (Nicolas Cantu) referred to the Civic Republic as "The Hidden City." "If they have technology and agriculture and sophisticated governmental systems, it'd be smart to stay hidden," Elton posited. "Even if it makes others question their motives."

The Alliance of the Three

The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed that the three-ring symbol represented the Alliance of the Three: the Civic Republic (population: 200,000); Portland, Oregon (population: 87,000); and Omaha, Nebraska (population: 97,407), plus its satellite, the Campus Colony (population: 9,671) in Lincoln, Nebraska. However, the CRM eliminated the Omaha Safe-Zone and the Campus Colony as part of a clandestine military operation ordered by CRM Major General Beale, who was first mentioned by Kublek in the World Beyond pilot episode "Brave."

The CRM claimed that Omaha and the Campus Colony were overrun by the dead, but Jadis — now CRM Warrant Officer Jadis Stokes — helped carry out a military operation to wipe out both civilizations with a bioweapon: a lethal green liquid chlorine gas.

The CRC

A conversation between CRM Staff Sergeant Jennifer Mallick (Annet Mahendru) and discharged CRM soldier Dennis (Maximilian Osinski) shed light on the CRM origins. In the World Beyond episode "Quartervois," it was learned that the Civic Republic Military agreed to a transition of power over to the Civic Republic Council (CRC) and the Civilian Government after a decade. But 10 years later, in 2020, CRM Major General Beale requested an emergency delay of civilian oversight due to the tragedies in Nebraska.

Read an excerpt from an issue of The Civic Republic Tribune:

A transition of power from military leadership to full civilian oversight is a bedrock provision of the Civic Republic's Founding Compact, the foundational document that has guided our city to rebuilding humanity for over nine years. Authors of the document were in agreement that military autonomy was imperative for the early survival of the CR, as well as its stabilization in the years to follow.

Project Votus

On World Beyond, it was revealed that Beale and Kublek founded Project Votus: a project that involves studying live test subjects through death to further research on reanimation. At a Civic Republic Research Facility located in Ithaca, New York, the CR recruited scientists like Dr. Leo Bennett (Joe Holt) and Dr. Lyla Belshaw (Natalie Gold) to develop a cure for the zombie virus. While Bennett researched fungi to accelerate the decay of the dead and eradicate "empties," Belshaw's secret zombie experiments used zombie-bitten test subjects that the CRM classified as "As." 

Belshaw created the green chlorine gas that was used to suffocate "A" test subjects and, later, was used as a bioweapon in the CRM's "tactical military operation" that destroyed Omaha and the Campus Colony.

The C.R.P.

The Walking Dead's "Rest in Peace" series finale showed Rick wearing a jacket with the three-ring logo. While he never appeared on World Beyond, the episode titled "Foothold" contained clues about Rick's fate: "Consignee Grimes" was put to work culling walkers at a Civic Republic Cull Facility. At these abandoned arenas and stadiums converted into CR decontamination centers, workers clear zombies on a mass scale to give the Civic Republic a foothold and reclaim entire states overrun by the dead. 

CRM prisoner Silas (Hal Cumpston) was similarly remanded to one of six decontamination centers in New York state, each operated by trained Civic Republic Military personnel. Rick, however, has spent the past eight years at the C.R.P.: the Civic Republic of Philadelphia. After six years, Consignees have a path for citizenship into the Civic Republic and can enlist in the CRM. But once you're in... you can never escape.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live premieres February 25 on AMC and AMC+. Here's everything else you need to know about the new Walking Dead Rick and Michonne show, and here's all the ways to watch.

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