As Twitter shares tank off the news of Elon Musk pulling a 180 on the $44 billion buyout deal, many are wondering what now? Twitter shares were down nearly 6% in after-hours trading on Friday, and investors fear they may tank even further when the stock market opens in the U.S. Monday morning.

Elon’s attempt to abandon the deal will most certainly force the big tech giant into an apocalyptic legal battle sending its stock price into a nose dive. Twitter’s “worst-case scenario” has now become a reality, thrusting a new level of chaos upon the firm.

In short? “This was worst-case scenario for Twitter, and now it’s happened,” said Dan Ives, the managing director and senior equity research analyst covering the tech sector at Wedbush Securities.

According to Yahoo Finance, Ives warned that Musk’s bid to walk away may make the company appear to be “damaged goods” in the eyes of other investors or potential acquirers. Wedbush Securities projects the stock could sink to between $25 and $30 when the market reopens Monday, down more than 30% from where it closed Friday afternoon before Musk’s filing.

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In a Friday evening news release, Twitter’s board threatened to “pursue legal action” to enforce the terms of the $44 billion deal Musk struck in April to buy the social network and take it private. He is required to go through with the purchase barring a major change to the business, which legal experts say is a difficult to prove.

Twitter’s board said that it was confident the company would prevail in court, but analysts warn – and employees fear – that Musk’s letter sets the stage for a turbulent period, which could carry new financial risks for the company and its workers.

Musk’s lawyers have repeatedly accused Twitter of failing to turn over data to help his team confirm the number of bots or spam accounts on the social network, setting a stage for a legal battle. Meanwhile, the company maintains it has complied with all of the terms of its agreement and has turned over its “firehose,” a massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted everyday. Legal experts say Musk’s case doesn’t meet a threshold to allow him to walk away from the deal.

Even if Twitter does prevail in recovering the deal or recouping a $1 billion breakup fee, a court battle invites new challenges. Twitter could be forced make key business metrics public, inviting questions from Wall Street about the overall health of the company, which turned its first profit in 2018 amid a major financial retooling.

A left-leaning watchdog group said Musk’s filing highlights why the deal has been fraught from the start. “While the fallout from Musk’s latest move still unfolds, one thing is clear: this chaotic crusade is nothing short of a five-alarm fire drill,” said Accountable Tech Co-Founder and Executive Director Nicole Gill in a statement. “Our information ecosystem, safety, and democracy cannot remain at the whim of unaccountable billionaires – whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else.”

Meanwhile, conservatives said the blow-up supported their growing push to regulate content moderation of social media at both the state and national level. “The richest man in the world couldn’t even pull this off,” said Kara Frederick, the director of the Tech Policy Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in a Fox News interview Friday night. “It’s time to start talking about policy solutions.”