With all that fans have learned regarding Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange’s attempts to override Wanda’s own explanation of why her powers have grown so out of control comes across as nothing more than a case of magical mansplaining. Though much about her character has vacillated throughout the years, with valid questions on whether she is a mutant or not, whether she is Magneto’s biological daughter or not, and even whether she is a hero or not, some things are becoming crystal clear. She is a prolific conduit for chaos magic, and she is descended from a long line of chaos magic users, meaning that there are other Scarlet Witches and Warlocks.
Scarlet Witch was introduced in X-Men #4 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as a villain, joining Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants after he rescued her from a mob. Wanda Maximoff would eventually come to believe that she was a mutant and the Master of Magnetism’s biological daughter. Those beliefs were upended as another chapter in her chaotic backstory revealed that she was neither a mutant nor Magneto’s offspring. Instead, she and her brother Pietro (aka Quicksilver) were revealed to be “failed” experiments of the High Evolutionary, an unscrupulous scientist who is obsessed with genetic manipulation. It was later revealed that this villain was only indirectly responsible for Wanda’s abilities, as his schemes merely awakened powers that she had inherited from her mother, the prior Scarlet Witch. With a family legacy of chaos magic, Doctor Strange's efforts to discredit Scarlet Witch and her fundamental understanding of her own powers are ill-informed at best.
Strange's know-it-all response was provoked by an argument with Wanda's friends in The Avengers #504 by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch, some of whom were defending her character after she has wreaked havoc on the team. Doctor Strange, going along with the idea that her magic powers are a mutation, made his own diagnosis. In short, he implied that her power “wasn’t earned through spirituality. It was given to her without understanding of its consequence.” In an even bolder claim, he then said that there was no such thing as “chaos magic.”
For a master of the mystic arts, this ends up being an asinine claim, meaning that it is Stephen Strange who ultimately did not understand one of reality’s fundamental magical forces. This is a glaring weakness in his comprehension as a Sorcerer Supreme and another reason for The Avengers to hate Doctor Strange, given that it has long been a part of Earth 616's history. Chaos magic is something that many Marvel magicians use, like Chthon, Agatha Harkness, and the earliest mages are and were acutely aware of – either fearing it or coveting it for their own use.
When it comes to Wanda, she has a knack for provoking some of comics’ strongest responses. To diagnose where Doctor Strange’s animosity and denial may have come from, it appears that his own failure as her teacher influenced his opinion. He also made it clear that he felt that she didn’t “earn” her powers. When given the benefit of the doubt, Stephen ends up looking like a dunce in his own field of expertise, joining countless Marvel characters who view Scarlet Witch negatively. In a scenario where he is instead willfully misinformed, Dr. Strange’s gut-level reaction to feeling threatened by a powerful woman has done a major disservice to her, stepping in to suggest that Scarlet Witch could not possibly know about her own powers.