The commercials for this week's episode -- entitled "Cabin Fever" -- have been kind of vague, but the episode synopsis really gets straight to the point. Here's what TV.com says about tonight's episode:

Locke finds out where Jacob's cabin is. Life on the freighter becomes dangerous.

Based on this, here's what I think is going to happen tonight.

• Ummm... Locke finds out where Jacob's cabin is. I'd guess he doesn't really do it alone, and I'd also bet that Ben doesn't help much -- Hurley is the key here. I think we'll actually see some form of Jacob here. Last week's episode-ending preview showed us Locke talking with who looked like Horace Goodspeed. Is it really old, dead Horace, or is it Jacob?

• Oh, and, life on the freighter becomes dangerous. But hw dangerous, exactly? More dangerous, than, say, Michael's ongoing sabotage of the ship's engine. Or more dangerous than the time they locked Sayid and Desmond in the medical ward while Desmond slowly lost his mind? It might just be me, but it seems pretty dangerous already -- I think they'll step it up by putting more pressure on Michael, Desmond and Sayid. When Keamy comes back to the ship, I see a hostage situation developing.

What do you think will happen in tonight's episode? Post a comment below.

The episode opens with music and a shot of a recorder -- this seems to be a recurring theme -- we see Locke's teenage mother hit by a car, shipped to the hospital and give birth to Locke three months before term. His father -- Anthony Cooper -- was apparently twice as old as his mother.

It seems like Locke was doomed from the very beginning. Now we have some idea why he was given up and spent his childhood in foster care.

Speaking of doomed -- it looked like Michael was a goner for a second. Keamy returns to the ship angry that Ben knew everything about him. The captain, in a move of self-preservation, tells Keamy that Michael sold him out.

The problem: Keamy can't kill Michael.

Sure, there's that whole "we need him to fix the engine" thing, but the island is also still protecting Michael.

Keamy's gun jams while he tried to shoot Michael because his purpose isn't fulfilled. The question: Just what is his purpose.

Another question: What is the doctor still doing on the freighter. Isn't that guy dead already? His corpse washed up on the beach several episodes ago.

John finds the ghost of Horace Goodspeed -- the ill-fated DHARMA mathematician who brought Ben and his father to the island -- chopping down trees in the jungle.

"You need to find me," he tells Locke. "You find me you find him (Jacob)."

We also see a flash back of John Locke, the "miracle baby" who fought off infection and survived despite being born toward the end of the second trimester. His mother runs off and refuses to hold him, and his grandmother wants to put him up for adoption.

In the window of the nursery we see the reason he might have pulled through his rocky infancy: an ageless Richard Alpert stares on through the glass.

(If you don't want to click on the link: Alpert never seems to age. He is the first of the island's native "hostiles" that a young Ben met in the forest. He helped Ben kill off DHARMA. And, at the end of last season, he was one of Ben's lieutenants.)

The questions: Is Locke fated to come to the island? Does he, as he believes, have a deeper connection to the land? And is Richard Alpert ageless or time traveling -- a question that occurs now that we see the freaky time-bending properties of the island.

Dharma, indeed.

We see a bit of a wider cultural reference here in this segment, as Richard Alpert gives young John Locke an apparent reincarnation test, showing him a series of items and asking him which belongs to him already.

From what I understand of the process, they use something like this to select the new Dalai Lama -- the idea being that there is only one Dalai Lama who inhabits the body of a different person each generation. They put the young candidate through a series of tests like this.

If Locke isn't the island's Dalai Lama, then who is? Is it Ben? Was Richard Alpert wrong? And just whose spirit are they channeling?

Also, on the freighter, Keamy says he plans to torch the island. He also claims he knows the one place Ben will go, which Widmore apparently had previous knowledge of -- does Keamy know the location of the cabin? The temple?

What are your thoughts on all of this?

We see an exchange here that may give a bigger hint to just who is the "Dalai Lama" of the island.

"I'm not you," Locke tells Ben, denying he was trying to trick Hurley.

"You certainly aren't," Ben says.

What does that mean?

Locke certainly has done a lot to duck the call of the island though. Again, in high school, Richard Alpert reached out to Locke, inviting him to Mittelos Labs summer camp. Mittelos, if you don't remember, is a cover company for the "others" on the mainland.

We also have the makings of a civil war on the freighter. Frank helps Michael and the captain helps Sayid take a small boat back to the island. Meanwhile, Keamy is gearing up with some kind of device on the inside of this bicep. My thought: this is some kind of heart-monitor device -- if Keamy dies, the island burns.

What do you think.

Which side of this battle is John Locke on? Which side will he end up on?

We see a cameo from Matthew Abaddon, working as an orderly. Last we saw him, he was dispatching Naomi, who was at one time commander of the troops on the freighter.

"The next time I see you, you'll owe me one," he tells Locke.

What does that mean?

The doctor was killed after the ship was alerted he was killed.

Keamy, to prove to Frank that he's a bad dude, slits the doctor's throat and throws him overboard.

The captain makes a stand, but Keamy threatens him with the device taped to his arm, then shoots the captain while he's not looking.

Frank makes the decision to fly Keamy's team back to the island.

Good call, Frank, good call.

What does all this mean about the time differences between the island and the freighter?

Only one man goes into the cabin to commune with Jacob -- John Locke.

It's his destiny -- a theme of this episode -- it's his time to save the island.

"It's yours now," Ben Linus tells him.

[SPOILER ALERT: I don't give away everything in this post, but I sure ruin the end of the episode, I'll tell you that much. If you haven't watch all of Thursday's episode, don't read the rest of the post. You know, unless you like the ending ruined for you.]