React will die by the weight of the frameworks and libraries that have duplicated effort and created more confusion and divide amongst the developer community.
If you don't understand how it works and how it can be combined with tools like Redux to create a highly debuggable and predictable app, it certainly looks like a bunch of newfangled framework stuff for the sake of nothing.
It's made my life infinitely easier writing front end apps that need to keep state and update when the data changes. Remember the old days of backbone and marrionette? Remember even older, having horrible jquery sprinkled around everywhere?
jQuery is just a library, it never told you how to write code.