Yeah, it'd be a bit of a cop out now if they did bring him back to life.
I do like how Joker has never really had a "true" origin story, but with the whole premise of Gotham being "see how it all came about" I figured we were gonna get one for this iteration of Joker. Once I'd resolved myself to having to deal with a Joker origin story in Gotham, I actually got really into Jerome as a character and as a performance, so I was cool with him being the Joker in that particular universe. Then they just cheapened the whole thing for me by killing him off, meaning that whoever does become the Joker now is just a rip off of Jerome, which pretty much goes against everything I know and love about the character.
I dunno, it was a just a really bad idea from the get go.
Although, they still haven't answered who painted "smile" on the wall in big red letters during the first season...