The Walking Dead Theory: Why Does The Civic Republic Want Rick?

The CRM found Rick valuable AFTER collecting him.

Firstly, if we’re to assume that Rick is “very valuable” to the CRM, then it stands to reason that he’s not being used as a test subject to be made into a walker. As we’ve seen in World Beyond, the CRM has no shortage of people they can have made into walkers, so why waste that on something they find so precious?

Secondly, if we’re to assume Rick was given this assessment after he was brought to them, he must have some attributes that they either find rare, unique, or just so good so as to put him above the other people they’ve collected and, this gives us two possibilities.

The Walking Dead Theory: The CRM values Rick for his leadership skills

Okay, let’s take a step back to what Rick had accomplished in the year and a half or so leading up to being taken in by the CRM. He had, in spite of losing two of his best friends and his son, managed to unite four disparate and diverse communities of survivors. Then through a combination of tactics, diplomacy, and ingenuity, managed to defeat a giant,  oppressive, and hostile community. After winning that victory, he chose to show mercy to his former enemies, incorporate the said community into the larger coalition he was creating, and willingly tried to sacrifice himself to stop a herd of walkers from destroying the very people of that coalition.

Rick was not a military veteran. Rick was not a politician. He was just an ordinary man. A local sheriff’s deputy, who, in the hopes of creating a safe and stable place for his children and his friends, had evolved into a leader.

On top of this, Rick had withstood tragedy after tragedy in the apocalypse. Being forced to kill his best friend and lost nearly every sanctuary he tried to build. He also lost his wife and countless friends, and then his son. He came out a stronger, wiser, better man than he was before.

When you look at it that way, it makes sense that the CRM would find him valuable. A man like that, a leader like that, doesn’t come around every day and is the kind of person who could lead the march of “the last light of the world” into the future and lay the groundwork for others to follow.

Maybe that’s what the CRM is looking for: Someone they can push as a leader for the entire Civic Republic to look up to.

Of course, that’s only one possibility.