It can go one of a few ways.
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Apart from the few subs that remain offline, it'll basically be back to normal. Those that do remain offline indefinitely just get forcibly reopened or recreated by admins, especially huge subreddits like /r/videos. Smaller ones just get redicted to /r/topicnew or some other creative name.
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A lot of subreddits and more importantly moderators and users leave the site permanently. In order for this to happen however, there'd have to be a consensus alternative, which there isn't ATM. Otherwise, these communities are pretty much lost forever unless the mods put a message to go to X alternative service in the "subreddit is private" banner. Tbh, I don't think people are gonna stomach losing years of their lives in an instant so they'll just re create subreddits unless the mods provide an alternative.
No matter what though, they're not backing down on the effective removal of the API (still leaving the sneaky clause "you can pay us if you want but it'll be a king's ransom" for AI, even though they can just trawl the web manually lol). They'll probably announce some crappy customization features to hoodwink those who don't know what an API is and lie to them and say it's "API v2" or whatever.
I just honestly don't know how it's going to shake out and I'm scared im going to lose these communities. I don't give a single solitary fuck about Reddit the company anymore, and I never did really. I just hope all of the subreddits find a new home and don't just shrug their shoulders and say "welp, guess that's it guys".
I don't think a consensus alternative is necessarily required. It might be best for the masses to be split amongst the many alternatives giving each one an opportunity to grow, improve and potentially rise up as a result of this event. I for one will not be using Reddit at all except for very specific sources of information which I will probably just scrape and store offline anyway.
I also like the concept of fediverse instances being local, meaning the internet is becoming truly more physically decentralized with local home based servers providing a base for local user registration and content creation/consumption. This has the potential for users to start 'filtering' their online experience to content created by the people in their local communities versus just a vast pool of global users.
I'm not sure I'm on board with joining a local instance. I live in a very conservative and religious country and I don't want to feel the need to censor myself on any community out of fear of having the instance admin ban my account because of differing beliefs. I'm sure it would work better for some than global instances, but I'm afraid they'd be prone to conformity and even nationalism.