There's too much wanting to cling to C. While a new programming language surpassing C won't happen in the short term, the traction will start with Zig or something not out yet, it needs to happen sometime. I think Zig is close, but something new will learn the lessons of Zig and other programming languages, and be the one that gains popularity. Zig would be suitable, but it needs to be something a little better without the design flaws they didn't foresee when creating it. Hopefully the ones who made these languages eventually contribute together for that.
It needs a better name. If Zig were created at the time of C++, it would be in much wider use now, but it wasn't, because it needed to learn the lessons of Rust, Golang and Swift which were ingenious. But if it were made at an earlier time, even those other languages, Zig would be harder to replace, and there would be fewer reasons to, and there would also be more clinging to it, with more reason to. This means, it's better to wait for something better now than to stick with Zig. Or Zig correct them for a next major release, and rebrand to change the name. I rather see the next language be based on Zig, with its creator on board.
However, one thing which may not be good to replace in the short term is the C libraries, and Zig and a few other modern languages are meant to make use of those. Those won't be replaced for a long time, and won't be for what will in the long term become legacy operating systems.