“It won’t be too long” before Fear the Walking Dead explores the CRM

The ominous phrase “The end is the beginning” has been present in Fear the Walking Dead throughout season 6. It’s been seen spray-painted on the side of buildings and has become associated with unknown, organized attacks on our communities.

So far, the season has certainly lived up to the line. In the latest episode episode, we’re introduced to a mysterious cult led by Teddy (John Glover). Wes (Colby Hollman), Luciana (Danay Garcia), Althea (Maggie Grace), and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) are welcomed into “The Holding,” a self-sustaining underground base of operations for a group that wishes to sow chaos among the surface communities. The cult doesn’t have a name yet, but I’m sure it will get one soon. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, co-showrunner Ian Goldberg admitted that nothing has caught on yet. “We have names that we call them amongst each other in the writing staff, but there’s no defined moniker,” he said. “We’ve read online people calling them everything from Enders to Beginners.”

And with the arrival of this cult, we also saw more of the CRM (Civic Republic Military), the all-powerful, highly advanced community teased for many years throughout the franchise.

Fear the Walking Dead: The Cult wants to attack the CRM

This “Doomsday cult” is definitely not to be trusted. They’ve done a lot of damage already, including a devastating attack on Tank Town, and from the looks of it things are about to get worse. During their time in the Holding, Althea and Wes decide to do some digging to learn what their true motives are, and find evidence that they intend to attack the CRM.

The symbol of the CRM — three intertwined circles — has appeared throughout the franchise. They’re the people who carried Rick Grimes away in a helicopter in The Walking Dead season 9, and they popped in up World Beyond. From what we know so far, they are not to be messed with.

In Fear the Walking Dead season 5, Althea develops feelings for Isabelle (Sydney Lemmon), a CRM pilot. The last time they spoke, Isabelle was at a drop-off site in a helicopter and Althea was in a plague-ridden, rat-infested building. It turns out Teddy may have been behind that biological attack, as co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss explains:

"It definitely is something that caught Al’s attention and kind of recontextualized the episode where she was in the tower and she thought the rats that had the plague were just there by happenstance, or that Teddy was targeting the people who lived in the tower. But now she’s realizing that he actually had larger plans and he was targeting these people in the helicopter."

Clearly, Teddy doesn’t comprehend what he’s getting himself into: “Now he might not know who the CRM is, but when you see people in helicopters, you know that you can probably exact some destruction on them.”

That said, once our group escapes (except for Alicia), Althea takes it upon herself to travel to the heart of the Civic Republic in an attempt to warn Isabelle of the imminent threat. “And I think on a more personal level, what it does for Al is it makes her realize that she’s got to act, she can’t kind of wait and see what happens. She can’t sit by and accept that something could happen to Isabelle,” Chambliss said. “So that’s why at the end of the episode she kind of makes that decision to go off and warn her, even though she knows trying to make contact with someone from the CRM could result in her own death.”

It sounds like we’ll get a good look at the Civic Republic when the show returns to Althea on her quest. “It won’t be too long,” Goldberg teased. “We won’t say exactly, but we will check back in on it and we’re excited for the next chapter there.”

Fear the Walking Dead season 6 continues Sundays on AMC!

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