Seven of Nine just keeps getting hotter

When Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, first appears she's nothing like the smoking hot Betty we've come to know and love. She's a ghostly pale member of the Borg who speaks, steps, and thinks in unison with her people. In her first encounter with the crew of the Voyager, her cube makes a tenuous treaty with the Federation ship, only to have the entire cube decimated by Species 8472, which is another story for another day.
The result of that destruction, though, is that Seven of Nine is abandoned aboard Voyager. Stripped of the bulk of her cybernetic Borg implants, she becomes a member of the Voyager crew, which is on a 70-year mission to return to Earth and the Alpha Quadrant. Check out this handy binge guide I wrote if you want to revisit Seven's greatest hits aboard Voyager.


It just so happens that Seven is played by mega-fox Jeri Ryan — and when her skin isn't pallid and she isn't covered in Borg prosthetics, it turns out she's fine as hell. You know, what? She's fine as hell as a Borg too — there, I said it!
Of course, Voyager capitalized on Ryan's babe factor by putting Seven in skin-tight, boob-accentuating uniforms at every possible juncture. It is…let's go with noticeable.

Credit: CBS

But, hey, I don't have beef with her being sexy. In fact, that's why we've gathered here today: To discuss the utter babe-itude of one Seven of Nine, aka Annika Hansen, aka Jeri f***ing Ryan.
You might be thinking, um, didn't Voyager end almost 20 years ago? Yeah, it did, but as many Trekkies know, Jeri Ryan and our favorite former Borg returned in the most recent Star Trek series: Picard. And, sweet Hera, did she make one hell of a return.
Picard follows the greatest Star Trek captain of all time — seriously, we had a no holds barred throwdown to determine who was the best — as he grapples with a terminal illness and the shocking discovery that Data's android children live. In Picard's Federation, synthetic lifeforms have been banned. And our curious (former) captain can't help but get into the thick of things.
Along his epic journey to find and help the synths with the assistance of his delightful new crew, Picard runs into familiar faces: Troi, Riker, and even Data (in the form of dreams and in the face of Altan Inigo Soong). But, the coolest, most impressive arrival and overall presence in the series has to be Seven of Nine.
When we catch up with Seven, who in this series is also called Annika by some folks, she's a badass space ranger on a mission of vengeance. It just so happens her ends and Picard's intersect. And listen, Seven is God herself in Picard. Sexy AF, deadly beyond reason, and queer — Seven (and Ryan) just keep getting hotter.

Credit: CBS All Access

Let's be clear: There is no moment in time when Seven wasn't a babe (and also queer, but that's a whole different article). Whether she's an eerie Borg or a svelte shipmate or a murderous death-dealer, Seven has a certain swagger, power, and je ne sais quoi that makes her entirely irresistible.
We could talk about her appearance all day, but what really makes her the BAE above all BAEs is who she is and who she becomes over the course of her life.
When Seven is first taken by Voyager, it's against her will. She has everything that has been her identity since she was a small child forcibly removed from her and she is removed from her community. Sure, they're a bunch of child-stealing f***ers, but the Borg are still her family as far as she knows. And, does one act of violating a person's will really fix another? IDK, but what I can say is that the person who comes after the Borg is not the child who was stolen.
Throughout Voyager, Seven tries to become more understanding and connected to humanity, but what she finds over the course of her years as a space ranger is that humanity isn't really all it's chocked up to be. A human she trusts kills her son Icheb, a juvenile Borg Seven found and raised. And it is humans — er well, Romulans, but you get the point — that try to kill all of the xBs (ex-Borg) aboard a cube that's being used for "research."
So if Seven can no longer be Borg but cannot fully align herself with humans and humanoids either, what will she do?
Oh, honey. She's Seven. She'll just go ahead and plug herself into a cube, become the Borg queen, fly through space to help her friends, and f*** up some Romulans along the way. There's more to it than that, but honestly, that's a pretty good summary of her actions in Picard.

Credit: CBS All Access

Over the 20 years that have transpired since she left Voyager, Seven has not only gotten hotter and hotter, but she's also learned to grapple with and employ her murderous rage, even if she sometimes wishes she was better at not killing people. Oh well. We've all got room to grow, Seven. Hey, and at least as she ages she gets to wear normal clothes instead of boob felt.
Seven has always represented conflicting and compounding identities — and her dual commitment to the xBs and to Picard and his team highlights how she's learned to reconcile her many identities. Plus, at the end, she and a member of Picard's crew get cozy, finally making our favorite former Borg canonically queer.
There's a lot of ups and downs in both Voyager and Picard, but one thing is undeniable: Seven of Nine and Jeri Ryan are the BAEest BAEs of all BAEdom.