I don't think it's the dead end - look at other languages like C++ (Bjarne Stroustrup), BASIC (John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz), etc...
Their fathers are either long gone or no longer involved however influence that those langauges had on the entire industry was so significant they [languages] got better over time and/or triggered new improved flavors of themselves...
I don't think anything would happend to C# if Anders decides to leave so Java will survive without Gosling.
There are many extraordinary tallents that can take any of these languages to the next level.

-- my opinion anyway --