Here’s another take.
We know that everything was reshaped to flatter and entice Patrick Stewart to come back and play Picard.
He kept refusing and keep on insisting on Picard’s life should be a reflection of his own.
But the suits at ViacomCBS (and later Paramount) put priority on greenlighting anything they could get with Picard as a character.
So, whatever initial concepts with and without Picard were all sacrificed in the end in order to indulge Stewart enough to play the role.
TNG movies are tricky in that they do embed a few spoilers.
If your wife doesn’t get into DS9, I’d consider hopping over to Voyager. It’s uneven throughout its run, but has many ‘best of trope’ episodes, and has proved to be the most successful entry series to the franchise of all of them.