Putting The Rick Grimes Connection To ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ In Context

It’s been two weeks now since Fear the Walking Dead introduced an unlikely connection in its series to a character on The Walking Dead, when we discovered that CRM, the outfit that absconded with Rick Grimes last season, is apparently the same organization that kidnapped Althea on Fear the Walking Dead this season. We still do not know what “CRM” stands for, but we can connect the logo found on CRM materials discovered on a walker by Althea to the same symbol found on the side of the helicopter that retrieved Rick Grimes.

Fear the Walking Dead has not yet returned to that plot point — the Fear characters continue to search for Althea — but producers behind the scenes have put it into context. For instance, that will not be the last time we see the CRM connection. Fear absolutely plans to pick up on that thread again — in fact, it would almost have to, if Althea is ever discovered — and Fear co-showrunner Ian Goldberg confirms that. “I think it’ll be very disappointing if we didn’t follow up,” he told an audience at the ATX Television Festival recently. Unless Goldberg specifically plans to disappoint his audience, the show will continue to explore CRM and its backstory in the episodes to come.

However, it is unlikely that all will be revealed on Fear, because the architect of The Walking Dead universe, Scott Gimple, has suggested that Fear and The Walking Dead will remain “separate entities” and that the connection to Rick Grimes will lead to something significant “outside of both shows.” There are only two real possibilities there, which is that it somehow leads to the appearance of Rick Grimes’ in the second spin-off or, far more likely, that it will help form the basis of the Rick Grimes movies.

We still only have a scant few details about the movies, including that they will air on AMC (and not in movie theaters), but now that Rick Grimes is officially dead in the comics, too, it’s possible that the three Rick Grimes movies will eventually culminate in the same events that led to Rick’s death in the comics.

The potential wrinkle there, however, is Rick’s death in the comics is associated with a few characters who remain on The Walking Dead, and Andrew Lincoln has vowed never to return to the television series. However, that does not preclude the possibility that some The Walking Dead characters may appear in a Rick Grimes movie. Besides, the four major characters involved in that comics storyline are Carl (already dead on the series), Michonne (leaving The Walking Dead in season 10), and Dwight (currently on Fear the Walking Dead), and there’s no reason at least three of those characters could not join forces together in the movies outside of the comics storyline. The biggest problem with that chain of events, however, is that Rick’s death in the comics is underwhelming, and not exactly great fodder for an epic Rick Grimes movie.

We will find out more about CRM and its connection to Rick Grimes in episodes to come on Fear the Walking Dead, which airs Sunday nights on AMC.