A new map will definitely be passed. The only question is whether it will be before next Tuesday night when this special session ends.
If not, it will be rammed through a new special session within a week, unless the Rats run for the border.
The map will be challenged in court, and that's fine. The Republicans control the state and federal courts at the appellate levels for this jurisdiction.
The longer this goes, how much of an impact do you think this will have on elections next year? This single issue has done what no democrat in the state of Texas has managed to do in the past few years - unite and organize the democrats (if you've been around Texas politics for any length of time, you'd realize the chaos of the dems over the past few years has benefitted Republicans greatly). If Republicans are complacent next year because we assume we will win, while the democrats are fired up and have their supporters united/organize, we could find some elections get quite interesting.
The maps are getting better. I did not like the original map that caused the dems to walk. I live in Austin, the original map would have me represented by somebody living on the Mexican border. That was a bit ridiculous.
I'd prefer they just draw up districts by geography (i.e. districts that are not 40 miles wide and hundreds of miles long). If we can't run a good enough candidate to win a geographical area, we don't deserve to win that area.