Is Garrus Romanceable in Mass Effect?

Yes. Garrus Vakarian is a romance option for a female Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. He isn't romanceable in the first game, he's never an option for a male Shepard, and the Mass Effect 3 romance only carries on if it began in Mass Effect 2. (Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 3)

Mass Effect: friends only#

In the first game Garrus is the C-Sec officer who quits to help Shepard hunt Saren. He talks with Shepard about the law, his father and the Spectres, but there's no romance with him. The first game's options are Ashley and Kaidan by gender and Liara for either. The Mass Effect romance options page covers all of them. (Mass Effect)

Mass Effect 2: where it starts#

Shepard finds Garrus on Omega, fighting as Archangel, and he takes a rocket to the face before he joins the crew. For a female Shepard, the romance opens after his loyalty mission, in which they track down Sidonis, the squadmate who betrayed his team. (Mass Effect 2)

He's nervous and awkward about it. Neither of them is sure a turian and a human can make it work, and he frames it as wanting a few moments that are just theirs before they head through the Omega 4 Relay. If Shepard asks whether he's uncomfortable, he says he's just nervous. The romance peaks the night before the jump, when Shepard touches the fresh scar on his face. Mordin, if asked, offers some clinical advice about human and turian biology. (Mass Effect 2)

In the Lair of the Shadow Broker add-on, a Shepard romancing Garrus can tell Liara she wants to give him something better after everything he's been through. (Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker)

Mass Effect 3: picking it back up#

If Garrus survived the suicide mission, Shepard finds him on Menae, Palaven's moon. Once he's back on the Normandy, he asks in the main battery where they stand. He jokes that she always liked scarred men and offers to get more scars if it helps. She can end it there, or continue by kissing his scar. (Mass Effect 3)

The lock-in comes later on the Citadel. Garrus takes her up to the Presidium and asks if she's ready to be with just one turian. If she says she loves him, they kiss, then shoot bottles with sniper rifles, the same outing a friendship Garrus gets but with romance lines. Before the assault on Cerberus headquarters he spends the night with her in her quarters. (Mass Effect 3)

The Citadel add-on gives him a date at the Silver Coast Casino, where he runs out of lines and drags her into a tango. (Mass Effect 3: Citadel)

On Earth he jokes about retiring somewhere warm and tropical and gives her an order to come back alive. With the Extended Cut, if he's in the squad for the run to the beam and gets wounded, Shepard carries him to the Normandy and they say goodbye there. In the endings where the crew holds a memorial, he's the one who puts up her nameplate, or, in the Destroy ending where Shepard can survive, holds it and doesn't. (Mass Effect 3; Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut)

If you don't romance him#

Garrus is still one of Shepard's closest friends either way, and a male Shepard gets the Presidium bottle-shooting scene as a friend. If neither Garrus nor Tali was romanced in Mass Effect 2, the two of them get together in Mass Effect 3, and Shepard can catch them in the main battery making excuses. (Mass Effect 3)

Read more: the full Garrus Vakarian biography and every Mass Effect romance option. (Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 3)