Star Trek: Picard season 3: Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher's slow-burn romance explained

gamesradar.com:

While Captain James T Kirk rarely hesitated to set phasers for romance, his successor on the USS Enterprise bridge preferred to keep his relationships professional. Even so, the possibility of a love story between Jean-Luc Picard and the ship's doctor, Beverly Crusher, was hinted at from the earliest episodes of The Next Generation, and it continued to sizzle (very, very slowly) in the background throughout the show's seven-year run. 

Now Star Trek: Picard season 3 has reunited the TNG cast, and Beverly Crusher is at the center of the action. Critically wounded on the edge of Federation space, she puts out a call to the only person who can help, prompting her former commanding officer to break ranks on a strictly off-the-books rescue mission. Now, having had no contact with his old flame for over 20 years, Jean-Luc has learned that Beverly not only has a second son (a half-brother to Wesley, named Jack), but that he's the father.

So, as Star Trek: Picard season 3 deals with some of the biggest bombshells in the TNG crew's history, it feels like a good time to look back on Jean-Luc and Beverly's decades-old romance…

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR STAR TREK: PICARD SEASON 3

The pair had known each other for well over a decade by the time they were both assigned to the USS Enterprise-D – though the circumstances weren't exactly conducive to romance. Beverly was married to Starfleet officer Jack Crusher, Jean-Luc's best friend and father of precocious child genius Wesley. When Jack died under Picard's command on the USS Stargazer, Picard brought his friend's body home. 

The captain was reunited with Dr Crusher when she requested a position as the Enterprise's chief medical officer, and – thanks to the ship's "village in space" ethos